Blowtorch & Corkscrew
by NikolaiEvans115
Summary: After the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, everything changes. Soul Evans and his friends Kid and Black*Star decide to join the Marine Corps.    It's 1942. They depended on eachother. And the world depended on them.
1. Semper Fi

Blowtorch and Corkscrew, Chapter 1: _Semper Fi_

**Death The Kid's journal entry for the day of August 16****th****, 1942:**

"_Makin Atoll: little more than sand, trees; and a small Japanese military base. Soul's reconnaissance team landed there almost a week ago, since then we've heard nothing. The waiting's over, we're going in. For all we know they're already dead. If what little we know about the Japanese is true, it might be better if they are..._"

Makin Atoll, Pacific Ocean

August 17, 1942—Soul Evans, M.I.A

**_-SEMPER FI-_**

I awoke to the screams of tortured men and the sound of a gruff conversation in coarse Japanese. My vision gradually cleared, and I found myself tied to a wooden post, my hands behind my back and kneeling on a rough, makeshift wooden floor in a bamboo hut. A man was similarly bound in front of me.

A Japanese officer strode up to the man, who was also tied to a post. The officer was clad in a swamp-green imperial army dress uniform with a small brown cap. A leather satchel and katana hung at his side, and he blew a puff of smoke from under his wispy black mustache; holding his cigarette in one hand with his other behind his back. The Jap major stepped closer to the man, his expensive looking leather boots clunking on the wood as he walked; imperiously sneering in the marine's face.

"You think 'cause you say nothing, you are strong?" The Japanese officer shook his head, continuing to speak, but in Japanese again. "_Kisama wa tsuyoku nai. Gohjoh na yatsu me."_

The marine's deep voice startled me as he spoke. The man sounded close to death as our gazes met, he looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

"Don't tell 'em…A fuckin' thing!"

The marine, Private Pyle as I remember his name was, bravely spat blood into the man's face contemptuously. The Japanese officer stood stiffly, straightening his collar with one hand and wiping the red liquid from his face with the other. He took a long drag on his cigarette , exhaling and feeding it with oxygen until it glowed red hot. He reached down and forced open Pyle's eyelid before jamming the burning hot cigarette into his uncovered eye. Pyle screamed in untold pain, some glowing ashes falling to the ground. He could do nothing, since he was restrained; and as helpless as me.

The officer then stood robotically once again, and left the hut as he gave an order to a common infantryman outside the hut on the moonlit beach.

"_Futari tomo karose!"_

The Japanese Soldier bowed, pulling a razor sharp, shining steel dagger from his boot and gripping the tortured marine by the neck as he put the knife to the man's throat. I looked away, only seeing the lamp silhouetted shadow-scene cast by a lantern that observed the grisly spectacle. Pyle's last brave, infamous words were a raspy "Go to hell…" A spray of fresh, crimson blood splattered the wall, and my comrade's limp body fell to the floor with a 'thud' and one last bloody gurgle; a mouth-like slit now through his neck and windpipe.

The soldier now turned his attention to me, snarling and exposing dirty, yellow teeth. He grabbed me by the collar, muttering something in Japanese and readying his knife. He seemed to repeat what the officer had said.

"_Kisama wa tsuyoku nai."_

"_Well," _I thought. _"This is it. Looks like I won't get to see Maka a last time. Killed by a Jap, what an un-cool way to go…"_

"Raargh!" Suddenly his whole body tensed in pain, his last hacking breath mingling with the distinct sound of a blade being withdrawn from flesh. His body crumpled silently to the floor like a bag of bricks.

"Soul, thank God you're alright. We'll Make them pay for what they've done."

Kid kneeled in front of me, smiling tiredly at me before reaching to undo my bonds. His facial stubble had grown unruly since I had seen him last, and his greasy ebony hair had become unkempt; the three horizontal white lines on the right half of his bangs were as prominent as ever. He was dressed in old, threadbare camouflage marine dungarees and a jacket, with a machete strapped to his back. He held a Thompson M1A1 [G] in both hands; the new style, with the muzzle compensator [G]. Across his back was slung a scoped Springfield 1903 [G] bolt-action rifle. God, that thing was old. Kid had used it back in Europe when we were fighting the freaking _Germans. _It probably couldn't hit the broad side of a barn now, but he used it anyway. He offered me a rough hand, and I took it, being hauled up easily.

He grimaced at me for a moment. "Your hair is atrocious though, not symmetrical at all! You need to fix it now before we can go on with the raid."

I chuckled. "You would stall the entire Pacific campaign just to fix my hair? Why don't we just get this over with, buddy."

His lower lip jutted out and his eyes shone in a way not quite appropriate for a man in his twenties. "But the symmetryyyyyy!" He whined, giving me a pleading look. I rolled my blood-red eyes, letting my arms rest at my sides while Kid rearranged my spiky silvery-white locks.

I watched as Black*Star choked the Japanese officer to death, crushing his neck between his muscular chest and the cold steel of his trench gun [G]. He grinned at me stupidly as he let the body go limp and fall to the sand. His shaggy spikes of bright blue hair were pushed up by a ragged first marines regiment logo headband. The sleeves of his jacket were cut off, leaving tattered armholes that showed off his thick arms and bulging biceps; his star-shaped tattoo on his left shoulder.

"Good thing you had a God-like marine to come and save your ass!" He patted me heartily on the shoulder, tossing me my helmet and pressing a Japanese Nambu taisho 14 [G] handgun, which I stuffed into my web-strap pistol belt. Not as good as the Colt, but I suppose it would have to do.

"Grab a rifle," Kid told me. "We're gonna tear this place apart. Kilik, signal for the rocket strike."

I took my OCD buddy's suggestion, hefting the familiar weight of an M-1 Garand rifle propped against a crate outside the hut. Kilik winked at me, his dark coffee skin shining in the light of the moon as he pulled out his flashlight. He pointed it out in the direction of the water, and blinked it on and off; once, twice.

A few faint 'bang's and tiny barrel flashes were seen and heard out on the ocean in the distance, and a low whirring filled the air; half of the tall Japanese bamboo huts on stilts were blown to flaming splinters, which quickly started the untouched thatched roofs on the other huts burning; flames licking hungrily at the bone dry wood and bamboo.

Immediately our small group of raiders erupted with covering fire, led by Kid; who quickly took command. "Soul, Black*Star, take the left! Kilik, Harvar, follow me!"

And so I sprinted after Black*Star onto a rickety makeshift boardwalk on stilts, standing alone next to the charred, smoldering yet still intact wreckage of a bamboo hut. Immediately startled Japanese soldiers took up defensive positions on the beach ahead of us, hiding behind stacks of boxes and unused equipment. I staggered backwards; my breath catching in my throat as a chatter of submachinegun fire splintered the rotting boards in front of me that I had just been about to step on. I threw myself flat as Black*Star fired over my head, the waves lapping gently against the blackened sand and wooden stilts. The air was abruptly split with blood curdling screaming in Japanese, and ghostly forms appeared out of the blackness to challenge us.

"_TENNŌHEIKA BANZAI!"_

What looked like a human bush charged me, and in the dim light of the moon, cold steel shone; fixed to the end of a rifle. I stepped to the side, barely avoiding the needle-sharp point of the bayonet as the soldier gave a feral cry of rage. He clubbed me with the heavy wooden butt of his rifle, and I fell flat on my back; time slowing down as the bayonet descended on me a second time, straight for my stomach. Thinking fast, I stiff-armed the rifle away, changing its downward momentum into horizontal momentum; the bayonet sank harmlessly into the sand next to me.

With blinding speed, my Kabar [G] fighting knife flew from its sheath and sank into the man's neck like a snake's fangs into its prey. His beady little eyes glassed over in death, and a bit of blood trickled from his mouth onto my jacket. Bracing my foot against his chest, I kicked the corpse off of me and hauled myself up and stood just in time to see Black*Star toss a grenade towards the pile of boxes where a cluster of Japs were taking cover. I traced the grenade's path through the air, and one soldier scooped the grenade up, cranking his arm back to throw it right back in our direction.

We might have been in trouble if Black*Star hadn't cooked [G] the grenade first.

It exploded in the soldier's hand, sending meat and bone fragments into the air as his arm was severed at the shoulder; his face and entire left side chewed up and spit out in the explosion. It was almost pitiful how the Jap gurgled in pain, clutching his stump, which was still gushing blood. _Almost. _

By now, Kid, Kilik, and Harvar were beginning to end the swathe that they had cut, slowly on an intercept course to regroup with us. Harvar shoulder his B.A.R, emptying an entire magazine to finish off the surviving Japanese so we could advance. I couldn't help but marvel as an explosion rattled my vision, sending a howling cloud of flame and debris into the air. Harvar suddenly cried out from the board walk to the next hut; a scream piercing the night air.

A burning Japanese soldier burst from the wooden doors of the hut, wrapping the support gunner in a fiery hug of death.

"Ahhh! _Get him off me!" _Harvar shouted roughly, trying desperately to wrench the flaming Jap off of him; but the soldier would have none of it, holding Harvar in a grip of iron. The classic Japanese way to go: die with honor and take as many of the 'white devils' down with them as they could.

Black*Star jammed the barrel of his trench gun in the soldier's face. "FUCK OFF!"

The Jap's head was ruptured with a single shell from his trench gun. The headless cadavre slumped to the ground with a 'clonk', his impact punctuated by the wet slap of brains hitting the wood, and the crackled of blood as it evaporated; hitting the flames.

I stood for a moment with Harvar as he brushed the flames off of his clothes and Black*Star, Kid, and Kilik sprinted ahead of us. Three more chattering Japanese rushed at us; one squinting down the sights of his rifle at my head. Just as I kneeled, drawing my Nambu pistol, he fired, literally knocking the helmet from my head. Before I knew it, I was squeezing off an entire magazine at them; the pistol bucking against both of my steeled hands. I was dimly aware of Kid standing next to me, cutting down the two remaining Japanese with bursts from his Thompson; the dull clack of empty .45 ACP shell casings hitting the wood filling my ears. The Jap I had fired at wailed pitifully in pain as gouts of blood splattered the wall behind him, the bullets easily piercing his flesh. One in the left arm, one in the chest, one in the throat. He staggered backwards and fell into a sitting position, not quite dead.

Kid, Harvar, and Black*Star advanced across the bridge to the next hut. A wooden door creaked open loudly, and another Japanese officer clad in green stumbled out, falling to his knees. He was followed shortly by Kilik, who held a Colt pistol [G] in one hand. The cowering officer's body jerked backwards as Kilik's pistol barked once, twice, three times; blood flying as his body reeled back and toppled over the railing. Kilik spit of the railing, calling down after the body. "You like that, you piece of shit?" My three comrades advanced without me as I turned, only to find the soldier that I had shot earlier; wounded and taking his last stand. He glared at me through slanted black eyes, bleeding from his mouth as he clutched his chest where I had shot him. He was sitting, leaning against a wall with a pool of blood under him. Not surprisingly, his head lolled and his body went limp; his eyes remaining open. I had suspected that he hadn't had long to live.

His arm went slack, falling to the floor. A black, canister-like object rolled out of his grasp.

I stared dumbly at it for a moment, already knowing what it was: a Kiska hand grenade. [G] I almost threw up when I noticed something off about it: the fact that its pin was _gone. _I had hardly starting running when it exploded, blowing me bodily through the railing and onto the surf soaked sand.

My heartbeat pounded in my ears, along with a sickening, high-pitched ringing. My normally clear vision was tinged oddly with gray. I was roused slightly by the cold surf soaking through my boot. Reaching around to my back, I felt the skin there. It was warm and wet…Shit. Probably not a good sign. I winced as my fingers brushed the raw meat. I faintly heard Black*Star calling my name, and the sound of his footsteps got louder. His face paled in the light of the moon as he locked eyes with me. My eyes; as red as my blood that stained the pure sand of the beach. He dropped his trench gun, kneeling beside me as he pulled out his knife.

"Hang on, buddy. We'll get Stein to patch you up…Hold still now, this is gonna hurt…"

I hissed as his fingers searched my back for shrapnel, and I hissed in sheer agony when he found it. He slid my kabar out of its leather sheath, holding it near my face.

"Open your mouth and bite on this."

I did as he bade me, my sharp canine teeth latching onto the hard wooden handle of my knife. Despite his appearance, Black*Star is a lot smarter than he looks. He and I had both seen men wounded, and who had bitten down on their teeth during surgery so hard that they're teeth had shattered. Having my teeth shattered is not real high on my 'List Of Things to Do Before I'm 30'.

I gasped as the cold steel of his knife entered my back; gouging and digging for fingertip-sized pieces of shrapnel. It seemed like an eternity before he finally said "Done." And offering me a hand, and he hauled me painfully up. "Don't worry, you can make it. Only a little farther ways to go before we can get off this rock."

"Machine gun!" Kilik called from up ahead, his voice barely audible over the familiar rattle of a Japanese Type 92 heavy machine gun [G] in the background.

Harvar grunted, ducking behind a hut as the stream of machine gun tracers bent towards his position, taking chunks of wood out of the bamboo hut's side. "Can't get a clear shot!" Harvar grunted. Black*Star rolled his eyes, searching for an opportunity to advance. "Then shoot through the god damn wood if you have to!"

Venturing into the hut that the second Japanese officer had come out of, I found a Jap Arisaka bolt-action rifle [G] sporting a bayonet. It was leaned against an improvised scrap wood table. I picked it up in both hands, discarding my Nambu onto the table top. The rifle was heavier than I would have thought. I locked the bayonet into place with a soft 'click', prodding the tip of it with the pad of my forefinger; it was needle-sharp, as I had expected. I peered down the iron sights through a square hole in the wall that served as a window, sighing. Japs would be Japs, I supposed.

Seeing the faint outline of the gunner's head in the window of the hut where the machine gun was operating out of, I lined up the iron sights and fired once. The Arisaka kicked against my braced shoulder.

"_God, these Jap guns kick like mules. Christ, I think it bruised my shoulder…"_

It was a headshot on my first try, and the figure in the hut fell below the window sill letting go of the machine gun so that it pointed skyward. I worked the bolt up, back, forward, and down; the ejected piece of brass clacking to the floor where it smoked for a moment. The sound of more weapons firing, _American weapons._

Venturing back outside, I found Kid shaking hands with another marine, flanked by a squad of four others. Black*Star gestured me to join them, and I followed as we all moved off the beach and up a path into a small thicket of jungle.

"Good work marines. Let's move." Kid said as we crept into the brush.


	2. Knee Deep

**A/N: In case anyone cares, I have done zero research for this story and am writing these facts from memory.**

"_War is never good. It is never right. And war is good for no one. But sometimes war is…Necessary. The second World War was one such war…"_

Blowtorch and Corkscrew, Chapter 2: _Knee-deep_

I followed closely after Kid, listening to the crickets chirp in the undergrowth. The path was half sand, half dirt; tall sharp blades of reed grass reaching up to our thighs. To our left and right were tall trees of many different kinds, most of them exotic and unfamiliar to me. Except for the palm trees. Probably because I've had to eat so many _God-damned _coconuts in the last four months. But, besides the point. Thin, snake-like vines crisscrossed the way ahead, hanging low and draped with leaves or moss, or entangled with other creeper vines.

"It's so quiet…" Harvar breathed.

"Tojo's [G] at home in this shit…" Black*Star grumbled, keeping low to the grass line.

Kid signaled us to stop by making a closed fist in the air and crouching; his Thompson held at the ready. My eye was drawn to a small light like a candle, shining in a small stone statue made to be shaped like a miniature temple or shrine like they would have in Japan. Large stone blocks were stacked up to our left; forming some sort of ruin. It was lit by a single solitary paper lantern.

Black*Star relaxed a bit, lowering his guard and gawking. "Check it out."

"Mhm. Looks like a temple or some shit…" Kilik mumbled, gesturing one of the marines accompanying us to go and investigate.

Suddenly the marine's strangled cry rent the night as he shot upward, yanked bodily by his leg; a rope snare catching around his ankle. A soft click, barely audible, marked the release of a pin from a concealed grenade which was primed as soon as the man was caught. His scream was cut short as the charge exploded close to his head, which was pointing groundward. The explosion chewed up his head and shoulders, leaving two legs hanging from the slim palm tree; attached to a armless, headless torso that looked more now like a bloody side of beef. All this happened in less than a second.

"_Tennōheika banzai!" _[G]

"Dammit! Booby trap!" Kid yelled, felling the first banzai charger with a rattle of fire from his Thompson.

"Hold your ground!" Kilik shouted over the din of war and incessant chattering of gunfire. "HOLD YOUR GROUND!"

Barrel flashes illuminated the clearing for a second at intervals like a strobe light; lighting up the small thicket of woods and showing the yellow-tan faces of our attackers, who were wreathed in leafed branches.

A second banzai charger lunged at me, sprinting; an Arisaka bayonet held high over his head in a stabbing stance. He went low, thrusting for the artery in my thigh. I quickly raised my foot in a high-step, bringing my foot down hard on the rifle's end. The force of my downward step nearly knocked the Arisaka from his hands; but still he clung stubbornly to the butt of it with one hand. Black*Star was on him then, and drove his kabar into the leaf covered soldier's chest, twisting the blade violently before jerking it out and letting the man's guts fall to the ground with a sickening squelch like someone vomiting.

The Jap's knees buckled underneath him, and he fell; laying dead in his own entrails and a growing pool of blood. We stood there for a moment, panting as we stared at the corpses lying face down in the blood stained sand. Kilik spoke first, breaking the silence.

"Let's pick up the pace, people. The second support squad should be preparing to rendezvous with us on the beach about now."

The faint rattle of a distinctly Japanese machine gun became audible, and the trees thinned out gradually; the rattle growing slowly louder in our ears until we came to a clearing. The place would have been the perfect spot for a vacation: starry night sky, crickets chirruping, soft sand. Except for the sound of constant gunfire and the desperate moans of dying men and screams as they were sliced apart by the bright stream of machine gun tracers crisscrossing the beach. We could now see the faint silhouettes of green-clad marines hunkering behind stacked log barricades and piles of sandbags. They were being harassed by fire from a single bunker; a single, bright spotlight illuminating the area from the top of a crude tower, and still more Japanese soldiers were charging them as we watched.

Kid addressed us silently, miming pulling the pin on a grenade and counting to three on his fingers twice; if that makes any sense. I understood immediately: he wanted us to throw our grenades towards the charging Japanese on the count of three. I unclipped a Kiska off of my belt; I had stolen it from a dead banzai charger. We pulled our pins in unison, counting to three our heads. I heaved the grenade overhand, as hard and far as I could; and it went sailing through the air landing at the feet of the charging men.

The grenades exploded together, spraying shrapnel, arms, and legs in all directions. Some wounded Japs tried to crawl away with both legs missing, only to be quickly finished by the advancing marines.

Kid threw himself prone, unslinging his Springfield from off of his back. He pressed the long, skinny rifle into my hands, pointing to the single leaf-covered Japanese soldier manning the spotlight in the tower.

"Take out that spotlight! Kilik, Harvar, 'Star, follow me: we're taking that MG out!"

I flattened myself against the sand, loading and resting the end of the rifle on the rocks in front of me. I peered through the unusually long scope, aiming for the broad face of the spotlight. I fired once, glass shattered and shards went everywhere; the night going dark from the absence of illumination. I worked the bolt up, back, forward, and down; chambering another round. Again I put the cold metal of the scope to my eye after confirming the results and hastily lined up the simple crosshairs with the man's chest; I fired, and the man screamed; plummeting the dizzying height down back to earth with a sickening 'crunch'. Soon the MG stopped firing, and only the sounds of the night could be heard the resonating noise of exotic birds and insects chattering in the foliage around us.

"Come on, keep moving."

We trotted across a small stream, past the body of the soldier I had shot out of the tower. His body was mangled, and his legs obviously shattered; jagged spars of bone protruding through each knee cap.

"Move, marines. I wanna get through the rest of this quick and clean; you hear me? Quick and clean!"

Soon we came upon another clearing surrounded by jungle; a small, shallow stream splitting the center of it, next to a ramshackle hut. But what really baffled and disturbed us was the 40 or so Japanese corpses littering the clearing.

"What the hell?..." One marine said.

Black*Star lowered his trench gun; cautiously stepping closer. "Who took these guys out?"

"Radio command, see if another unit came in ahead of us-"

_*POOF! Fizzz…*_

A flare, as bright as the sun, exploded in our vision; blinding us all. I violently rubbed my eyes, when I could finally see a little bit; a marine was knocked flat on his back by a Japanese private. With a blood-curdling cry he drove the katana down through the man's stomach, pinning him to the ground.

_BLAM!_

Droplets of the man's flying blood shone in the light of the flare as his forearm was shorn off by a blast of molten shot from Black*Star's smoking trench gun.

"Ambush!" Kid shouted over the noise of gunfire. Before our eyes, the 'dead' Japanese rose slowly from the ground like something out of a sick twisted dream, standing erect like zombies straight out of a nightmare.

"_Tennōheika banzai!" _Kid barely shouldered his Thompson in time, hastily firing off a burst that took the first banzai charger in the knee; splintering the bone in two and chewing the flesh from it.

The man screamed in horror and agony, hopping on his only foot for a few steps before falling face first in front of Kid; who brought the heavy wooden butt of the Thompson pounding down on the Jap's head over and over again, before he was still.

I looked away, my gaze fixed upon the dead man's severed leg, still wrapped neatly with bandages, the boot still on. The ragged stump still bled into the picturesque stream, the red liquid mingling with that of the marines'.

A Japanese soldier charged me, covered in leaves and branches and leaves and wielding a Type 100 submachinegun. [G] In a blinding move, I stepped closer; sliding my kabar through his rib cage and into his heart. I punched him in the jaw and he went down. I picked up his Type 100 as he gurgled, slowly bleeding out as his heart pumped his newly oxidized blood out through the slit in his flesh instead of into the veins that needed it; soaking the rough ground with scarlet. I pulled back the slide on the SMG [G], reaching into his knapsack; groping around until my hand closed around the cold steel of a familiarly shaped thin, curved banana-style magazines. [G] I sprinted along after Kid, Black*Star, Kilik, and the other marines as they finished the remainder of the ambush party; the flare fizzling out overhead.

We soon came upon the decently sized Japanese base, made up of two or three more large bamboo huts, a concrete ammunition bunker, an iron radio tower, and finally another crude stilt sniper tower.

An old junker imperial Japanese truck stood in the middle of the road that led down to the gates of the compound, its bed contained a few rusted barrels of petrol. We were already receiving fire as we rushed to the truck; bullets kicking up the dirt next to us and zinging off of the iron chassis of the vehicle.

"Black*Star!" Kilik called, squeezing off a few rounds of suppressing fire from behind the cover of the Japanese vehicle. "Start the truck! Soul, use you knife to put a hole in that barrel!"

As Black*Star opened the truck's driver door, twisting the key, still in the ignition; and the engine coughed and wheezed to life as I yanked down the cheap wooden tailgate, driving the shadowy black tip of my kabar into the thin Japanese barrel with the screech of metal on metal. Yanking it back out of the barrel, I admired my work; feeling the satisfying warmth of gasoline pouring onto my hand as the strong odor assaulted my nostrils; the clear liquid shining languidly in the moonlight. I barely had time to step back before the truck started inching forward and then speeding along the road at 60 or so miles per hour. Black*Star swerved back and forth along the dirt road, the gasoline splashing to the ground behind the truck as it flew forward. He had always been a terrible driver.

He kept his head low below the dash as SMG and rifle fired shattered the windows, showering him with shards of glass. Just before the truck impacted with the flimsy chain link gates, he kicked open the driver's side door; jumping out, tucking, and rolling up behind part of the wood and sandbag gates. The truck continued on its wayward path, busting almost effortlessly through the gates, the chain binding the gates shattering and sending broken chain links into the air as they ground open on their rusty hinges. Without a driver, it quickly veered off its predetermined path and into the steel girder radio tower; where the gas tank exploded into a mushroom of flame, gutting the insides of the vehicle so that only the metal frame remained. Harvar bent down, flicking up a flame on his custom 1st marines lighter and putting it the invisible trail of gasoline splattering the road. He had to jump back as the fumes burst into flames in the air, the fire quickly racing along the gas trail like a hungry animal where it caused another huge explosion upon reaching the tower.

_Utter chaos!_

With a prolonged, monstrous groan, the tower's weak, melting frame bent; and the entirety of the thing toppled onto one of the huts, kililing several Japanese as they were crushed beneath the metal monster. Now the base was in complete disarray; with some soldiers windmilling their arms in the sky as the burned to death, others dead and littering the ground, blown apart in the explosion.

We rushed after Black*Star, the suppressive fire of the Japanese slackening off in the firey confusion. I followed Kid to the cement bunker just inside the gates, following Kid's lead as he let loose some rattling fire towards the surviving Japanese; pinning them down where they crouched behind sandbags and boxes.

He sprinted to the iron door, Harvar picking off the few Japanese soldiers that stood above the rail to the bunker with his B.A.R. Yanking on the handle, he found it stuck tight, held by the other side. A Japanese officer wielding a Nambu stuck his arm through the door, firing randomly. The bullets ricocheted off the cement walls before Kid finally pried the heavy, metal-plated door open and I felled the man with a few powerful rounds from my M-1 Garand. Then I spotted the grenade on the floor. "Shit!"

But Kid was faster, he scooped it up in one hand; chucking it out of the door where it exploded, the ring of the blast hurting my ears along with the zip off shrapnel off of the concrete. I took a moment to scan the interior of the small ammo bunker. Just a simple wooden table, a radio and some shelves stacked with long, pointed, brass anti-tank shells [G]. Some additional, larger 200mm cannon ammunition [G] littered the floor in stacks.

"Black*Star, guard that door; Soul, get to work planting these charges…"

He tossed me a green canvas bag filled with explosives and priming pins. I painstakingly set the bomb on top of the wooden table, watching as Black*Star cut down a Japanese soldier that had jumped down to stop me.

*_Click-click. BOOM!* _The leaden shot took the man in the chest, throwing against the wall, where his scarlet blood was splattered all over the concrete behind him.

"The timer's fried!" I called to Kid at the doorway. He came over to inspect my work, cursing under his breath as he found my observation to ring true. He called Harvar over to our position, grasping the field phone attached to the radio on Harvar's back. "Major Tlipoca," Kid spoke. "The timer is fried. We may only get a few minutes before detonation. Yes. Understood sir."

"Let's move ass marines!" Black*Star called from outside, talking and returning fire to the Japanese at the same time. "Sid's company has rubber boats on the beach, let's get the fuck out of here before those charges blow this sky-high!"

"Come on," Kid seconded, hastily sprinting after my blue haired friend. "Move to the boats!" We rushed across the clearing, where now countless Japanese were swarming around guns blazing. Dodging bullets and ducking grenades I raced straight ahead, onto the path next to a hut that led to the ocean: I was so close now that I could see the water shining in the moonlight.

That was when a grenade exploded in front of me, jarring my entire body. I continued to stumble forward, my vision gray and foggy. I knew I would be alright if I could just get to the boats…

A Japanese soldier jumped down from the window of the hut next to me, a long katana shining in his hands.

"_Tennōheika banzai!"_

The sound of a blade slicing flesh, a feeling like hot iron cutting through my nerve endings, and I fell. My vision went almost black, and I felt sleepy; tempted to close my eyes, even though I knew I was badly hurt and in the middle of a battle. It worried me, how Kid's cry of 'SHIT!' sounded so faint in my ears, so far away as he screamed; pressing the barrel of his Colt to the back of my attacker's head from behind and firing one round. A resounding 'BOOM!' and a splat as his ragged head hit the ground.

"It's okay Soul," Kid whispered comfortingly, picking me up bodily and placing me in the bottom of our rubber boat. "I got you."

"Kid…" I rasped. "Get that katana for me."

He looked at me quizzically for a moment before retrieving it and jumping into the boat next to me as Harvar started the motor.

"Okay, we're leaving." Black*Star said. "Everyone keep down."

Kilik patted me on the shoulder. "You're gonna be okay, just hang in there…"

The motor revved to life and we sped away into the night, the bow of the boat cutting through the low swells like a sharp knife.

"Where's the fireworks?"

"Please tell me those charges weren't duds…"

"They better not be…" Kid murmured. The whole unit seemed to hold its breath until the ammo bunker exploded, the detonation shaking the whole world as fire shot skyward in a huge cloud; debris being flung miles wide.

Black*Star broke the silence. "If you die of blood loss, can I have that?" he pointed to the officers katana clutched in my bloody hand.

I weakly raised my hand and flipped him the bird, rolling my eyes in the dark as we flew away off onto the black expanse of the Pacific.

(:Glossary Of weapons and terms:) OF DOOM

-All weapons are WW2 era and are not used today unless I say otherwise-

_Tennōheika banzai-_ Literally meaning "May the emperor live for 10,000 years!". If just 'banzai' is used, it can also mean "charge!".

Tojo, Nips, or Japs- racist nicknames for Japanese soldiers. 'Tojo' is named after Japan's minister of war at the time; Tōjō Hideki.

Type 100- Japanese SMG. Low caliber, fast rate of fire, and good magazine capacity.

Magazine- whenever a magazine is mentioned, it refers to the metal container that loads additional rounds into the gun to be fired. With an empty magazine or no magazine, the gun does not fire.

Anti tank- an anti tank gun is a rifle or cannon that fires rounds specifically to pierce a tank's armor and explode inside the chassis. If the men manning the tank are not blown apart in the explosion or killed by shrapnel ricocheting around the inside of the tank, their eardrums will burst and they may never hear again. Internal bleeding is also a possibility from the concussion of the explosion.

200mm- get a ruler and measure out 200 millimeters. Now imagine that were the width of the barrel of a cannon. Now think "Shit, I would not want to get hit a gun that fucking big." So yeah. It's a big gun, and will be mentioned in chapters to come.

SMG- abbreviaton for submachinegun. Just in case you don't know, a submachinegun is a low-caliber automatic firearm. Automatic means that as long as you hold down the trigger, the weapon will continue to fire in rapid succession. When something is semi-automatic, if you pull the trigger the weapon will fire once; one time for the first trigger pull. To get the weapon to fire again, additional trigger pulls are required.

Nambu Taisho 14- Japanese semi-automatic pistol. A popular 'souvenir' among marines in the Pacific.

Thompson M1A1- American submachinegun, it is capable of automatic fire.

Muzzle compensator- attachment to the end of a gun's barrel that lessens the rise of the end of the barrel when the weapon is fired.

M-1 Garand- American semi-automatic rifle. Shorter range and less accurate than the Arisaka, but has some advantage over it because of being semi-automatic as opposed to bolt action.

Springfield 1903- American bolt action rifle. The only sniper rifle extensively used during WW2 by the Americans.

Trench Gun- American combat shotgun. Pump action, not semi-automatic. Can be fitted with a bayonet.

Kabar- Look it up in a dictionary. Kabar is actually a company that made the knives for marines during WW2, and still makes knives today. If you look it up it will likely be described as "A marine's knife".

"cooking"- to cook a grenade is to hold it for a moment after you pull the pin to arm it, so that it will explode before the enemy has a time to throw it back.

B.A.R- literally standing for Browning automatic rifle. It was an attempt to create the first assault rifle, but turned out as more of a light support weapon. Capable of automatic fire and usually sporting a bipod.

Colt 1911- American handgun. Rugged and reliable, why it is still used today.

Kiska- Japanese hand grenade. Shaped sort of like a small can of pop instead of the American version, which was shaped more like a mini-pineapple.

Arisaka- Japanese bolt action rifle. Powerful, good penetration, decent range. Fixed with a bayonet very often.

Type 92 heavy machine gun- Japanese machine gun. Average rate of fire, powerful, and too heavy to be carried and fired; it must be set on a tripod or special mount


	3. Dark Memories

I awoke to a dull, throbbing ache in my chest and a stiffness permeating my entire body. I sat up, pushing off the rigid, white starched hospital sheets. Our company medic, simply called "Stein" by most marines in the 1st division, sat in a chair near the corner of the room. Kid waited with him, standing next to the door.

The doctor smiled at me vacantly, but it wasn't exactly what you would call a friendly smile; more like he was sizing me up to see how big of a scalpel he would have to use to dissect me. He had steely gray hair and glasses. His standard issue olive green combat fatigues were patched together with strange, large over exaggerated stitches; and his white armband marked with a red cross stood out on his left bicep, marking him as a medic. The most bizarre thing about the man, though, was the fact that he had a large screw sticking straight through the side of his head and stitches on various areas of his body. Yeah, you heard me. _A screw._

"So," he said. "The sleeper finally awakes."

Kid smiled at me. A friendly smile, this time. "Stein patched you up pretty well."

I looked down to my chest, where I found a set of stitches that hadn't been there before. The katana wound had been sewed up, but the skin around the deep cut was still an angry, blistering red.

The door opened, and Kilik and Black*Star walked in. "You don't have to worry about combat for a while. We're going on leave for a while."

-_bLoWtOrCh & CoRkScReW_-

I awoke with a start, almost falling out of my bunk and onto the concrete of the bleachers. To my and the marines collective horror and exasperation, the company majors piped a bugler playing '_Reveille' _into a large microphone hooked to enormous speakers all around the stadium.

I should explain. We had been dropped for leave and light training in Australia, so we had been dumped in a baseball stadium where the hundreds of us slept on cots. Not exactly home-sweet-home.

We all had been out late drinking last night, and roughly two thirds of every marine present had an enormous hangover. Even Kid had been drunk. And he doesn't even _drink. _He had insisted on having eight shots so it would be symmetrical, even though it probably would've only two or three to get him intoxicated.

Standing in crooked lines, and sizing up the disheveled marines, it was clear that today was going to be a long day. Major Law started calling roll.

"Evans, Soul?"

"Here." I mumbled. The man next to me started snoring and fell face first into the turf, where, to our horror, he continued to sleep.

-_bLoWtOrCh & cOrKsCrEw_-

As I walked back from my PK duty and into a field where some marine riflemen and their new Aussy girlfriends (Or as the case was %99.9999 of the time, one night stands) were watching the training of the marine mortar crews.

I passed Black*Star; unconscious face down on the grass with a melting ice pack on his disheveled spikes of shy blue hair. Obviously still recovering from his hangover. I spotted Kid, lounging on the grass with his arms about a short-haired, busty blonde girl sitting in his lap and giggling.

I smiled at this; not particularly surprised. Kid had always been extremely popular with the ladies. He was nice, refined, handsome; the complete gentleman type. Not to mention he was filthy stinking rich and his father owned almost an entire city in Nevada. I should know; I spent my childhood there. I flicked my gaze to Kid and the girl, who were sharing small kisses as he spoke gently to her.

I had never really thought about women until I met Maka a few years ago. That thought made me frown, remembering that I had shared similar times with her when we were dating. Then things had taken a turn for the steamy which I'd rather not go into. Yes, I know you would _like _me too, but I find that kind of private. Okay! Fine! I promise I will, just not right now.

As we watched the mortar training, my mind wandered back to our training at boot camp, where we learned to survive: to fight.

fLaSh

"_Today...you begin your training!" Sergeant Sid Barrett was saying as we crawled under barbed wire, which the drill sergeant had had draped in all manner of guts and unsavory cow organs. "At zero-nine-thirty, Major Tezca Tlipoca will tell you about how the free world will conquer the Japs with the aid of God and a few Marines! God has a hard-on for Marines because we kill everything we see! He plays His games, we play ours! To show our appreciation for so much power, we keep heaven packed with fresh souls! God was here before the Marine Corps! So you can give your heart to Jesus, but your ass belongs to the Corps! Do you ladies understand?"_

I was brought back to Earth as a mortar shell exploded out in the field, a piece of shrapnel hissing through the air and into a marine's helmet, other metal projectiles tearing up the torso of another. Good thing the "marines" were only a straw dummies in marine clothes with helmets and a faces painted on their 'heads' in black ink. They were both lying face down on the ground, as if prone.

"Now what the _fuck _was that, Private Sledge!" The drill sergeant yelled, gesturing to the dummies, who had small wooden boards tied around their necks like nametags; labeling them "Bob" and "Joe".

"Did Bob owe you money or something?" He shouted sarcastically. "Did you find out that Joe was screwin' your girlfriend? Well, it doesn't matter now. You know why? Cause they're fuckin' dead. And the Japs over there are left alive, holding the line."

The drill sergeant pointed to two other dummies farther up the field, with wooden board nametags around their necks as well that designated them as "Tojo" and "Fuckface". Some marines had even drawn stereotypical bucked teeth on one and comical crossed eyes and a glazed expression on the face of the other.

I lost interest and my mind wandered even farther back and I relived time that we had first encountered the Japanese on Guadalcanal.

fLaSh

**Day 1**

"Forget all the horse shit you've heard about the Japs," Sid was saying. "They've had their turn. Now we're having ours. Those bastards may have started this war, but _we will finish it! _Those monkeys want to use this little piece-of-shit rock and the airfield on it to kill us; but I promise you, we'll drag them outta their shit filled holes by their yellow balls! And when you see the Japs…" Silence. "Kill 'em all!"

There was a roar of approval from the marines.

In the landing tractors while going to the shore, some marines were praying, chewing gun, smoking, or rubbing various rabbits' feet, lucky charms, etc. The ramp dropped into the shallows with a splash and the rattle of chains. We stormed out onto the beach, and found…Battalions of marines sitting idly on downed palm trees, playing cards and laughing with their buddies.

"Welcome to Guadalcanal," Someone said.

We quickly joined them, as Black*Star set about to the task of trying to open a coconut to eat. "Haha!" he called as he peeled the outer husk off of one of the shelled fruits. "Got ya now, ya sonuvabitch…"

Kid rolled his eyes as Kilik barely restrained laughter. Having peeled off the outer shell, the blue-haired man stared stupidly at the nut. "Whaddo I do now?"

"You either use a machete or a rock," I informed him.

"You should use your head," Kilik called to him as he lounged on the sand, lighting a smoke. "It's big and rock-like."

A rookie, low-rank marine walked up to Black*Star awkwardly. "For what it's worth," He started quietly, "First lieutenant Ford said that the Japs might have poisoned the coconuts…"

I stared at him blankly for a moment, my blood-red eyes half lidded. "They poisoned a billion coconuts?" He walked away.

Over a ways on the beach, a marine yelled out in pain; dropping his machete. His hand had slipped when he was trying to open a coconut with a machete. "Ah, shit, my hand! Aw, son of a bitch…"

Kid stood behind us. "Intelligence says that the Japs have moved back into the jungle. Clean any sand out of your weapons; we move in three minutes."

Kilik rose lethargically from the sun-warmed sand, placing his helmet back on his head. "Yay!~" he sang. "Let's go find some Japs. Shall we, boys?"

**Day 2**

We fiddled nervously with the safeties on our weapons as we stepped through a clearing filled with high, sharp blades of reed grass. Only a few skinny palm trees marked the land ahead, the air silent save for the chirping of exotic birds and noises of unfamiliar wildlife in the trees.

We all jumped as a twig snapped and birds flew squawking from a tree with a loud fluttering of wings. And still the sun beat down on us as we ventured deeper into the lion's den; the air tense with apprehension.

We passed an old abandoned Imperial truck smashed under a fallen tree; the only sign of life we had seen yet far. Further up there were camps, they all looked as if they had been hastily abandoned. Helmets and clothing were thrown around, eating utensils and bowls of freshly prepared food sitting out in the open.

I could practically feel a permeating sense of evil coming from the thick jungle ahead of us, as if an enormous malevolent entity were waiting for us; just daring us to set foot inside the foliage. Not a word was spoken as shafts of sunlight lanced down through the bladed branches of palm. We crept through a stream, up a sloped hill, in between thickets of bamboo. That was when we saw them.

Marine corpses; the only sight of past fighting yet seen, it was a gruesome sight. Some were beheaded, others had had their pants ripped open; their genitals cut off and stuffed in their disembodied heads. Others had had their arms and legs hacked off or their guts spilled to the jungle floor. Silently and in unison, our hatred for the Japanese grew to an unhealthy level; and we vowed to kill every single last one of them.

That night it rained. Nothing could be heard except the patter of rain off of helmets; not even a single marine spoke. Then a shouted order was heard, and our fellow marines erupted in a hail of gunfire; the sudden fireworks show of barrel flashes startling us enough to ready our own weapons and give fire in the same direction as everyone else. Then another faint order was heard. "Cease fire! Cease fire!"

**Day 3**

The next day, insects chirped in the undergrowth as a soldier's shovel churned the sandy earth; the dead marine's bullet hole-riddled body lying in a blood covered canvas shroud next to the makeshift grave.

"He went to take a piss," Kilik explained sullenly. "Somebody must have opened up. He forgot the password."

"Start walkin', we're moving to the top of the ridge."

Later we dug ourselves foxholes, setting up the machine guns and mortars.

"No fires, no flashlights." First lieutenant Ox Ford said as he strode up to us, wiping the sweat from his bald head. "Let's assume the Japs are watching right now."

"Assume?" Black*Star guffawed. "They are."

"Then let them come…" I muttered to myself.

That night we watched the U.S. and Imperial navy duke it out in the bay off of the island. It provided great merriment, watching the huge fireballs roll skyward; airburst exploding speckling the night sky as oil on the water burned, making it look as if the entire Pacific was on fire.

"It's like the Fourth of July…" Black*Star mused as a huge mushroom cloud went up into the moonlit air, the shock wave of the explosion washing over everything.

"We're killin' them. I know it." He said.

"I admire your optimism…" Kid breathed.

**Day 4**

That morning we found the bay to be a wreck of oil slick and smoking wreckage, supplies, crates and barrels bobbing up and down in the surf.

"Half the fleet went down." Harvar said. "With all our grub, medical supplies, and all our asswipe." [G]

"Dig in marines," an officer announced. "We're gonna be here for a while…"

That night we assembled in our MG pit, stacking sandbags around the perimeter.

"Want some?" Kilik offered, holding out a yellowy liquid in a glass bottle to Black*Star. "Some wine that the Japs left behind."

My ADHD buddy took the cask, holding it up the light and examining it.

"Tastes like donkey piss," Kilik confessed. "It's not bad though."

Black*Star popped out the cork and downed almost half in one go. Harvar gave a grudging smile. "If ya can't fight 'em drunk, don't fight 'em at all." We laughed as we set up the water cooled Browning machine gun [G] tripod and the golden sun drowned in the Pacific waters.

**Day 5**

The following day brought yet more bad news when we spotted the Japanese naval blockade slicing the bay in two. That day we walked to a place called Alligator Creek; a small inlet that came right out to the shore. We were ordered to set up foxholes and MG pits and watch the opposite bank, and we did so; digging hard and long as more marines set up barbed wire along the shorefront. Kilik set up the water coolant system and pulled back the slide on the Browning, peering along the flip-up iron sights towards the opposite bank; the night having already fallen around us.

"Movement! We got movement!" An officer called in an urgent whisper. Sure enough, on the bank the branches of trees were undeniably moving back and forth. There was a crushing, deafening silence; shorn to pieces by an eruption of gunfire from the Japanese bank, filling the air with thunder and tracer rounds [G]. Mortar shells exploded on both sides, and bullets struck the sandbags as Kilik returned a salvo of lead towards them in exchange. I could see silhouetted forms of soldiers wading through the shallows in a sharp arc around to our left in a flanking maneuver; and opened up on my Thompson in their direction. They fell dead, floating in the shallows as marine MG fire showered them with lead and mortars exploded around them, cutting their insides to pieces with shrapnel. But more kept coming, all holding rifles high overhead and screaming threats in chattering Japanese.

There was a loud 'poof' and fizz as a flare lit up the sky, making it possible to see for a moment. A seemingly endless charge of Japanese soldiers rushed into the water, many being killed; but they just kept coming as if there were no end to them. More American mortars exploded among the opposite bank, and wood groaned and snapped as palm trees toppled.

They were close enough to see now, yelling "BANZAI!" and charging us with bayonets. But the rattling of machine guns kept up relentlessly as flesh flew and men died; falling dead in their tracks until the incessant chattering of gunfire wore on through the wee hours of the night and it was morning.

**Day 6**

Once we could see, I almost couldn't believe my eyes. An unbelievable amount of Japanese corpses littered the beach, no; _covered _the beach. Some were half buried in sand by the tides; others were rolling around in the surf farther out. A group of marines went out to loot the corpses for valuables or souvenirs, and to finish off the survivors.

A young, teenaged Japanese soldier reached out a bloody; sundried hand, half buried under the bodies of his fellow fallen soldiers as flies buzzed all around the corpses. He made thirsty, strangled noises as a good-hearted medic went up to him to see what he could do. Another man helped him and they picked him up between him. Neither of them noticed the Kiska hand grenade he had held behind his back.

"_Tennōheika B-Bbanzai!" _The grenade exploded; killing all three men and sending limbs and a fine spray of blood and meat into the air.

And just like that three or four more Japanese soldiers ran from the undergrowth, guns blazing as they fired randomly. Most were quickly cut down by MG and small arms fire, except for one; who ran back and forth as if he was confused.

"Raaaarrghh!" He ripped the cap from his head and threw it to the ground, screaming in agony and sorrow. He continued to yell as he waded into the shallows, yelling in rage as tears ran down his face; missed shots of marines kicking up dirt and water around him. He stood there, making gestures like he wanted us to kill him as he cried a pitiful, heartbroken sobbing. One round hit him, then another, and he raised his hands to the sky as if to say _'Why?' _

Slowly, dramatically, Black*Star raised his Colt in one hand; and for the briefest second I thought his pupils had a strange shape, like stars.

**BOOM.**

The round took him in the heart, and he fell backwards; his pain ended as he bled out, his blood mingling with the salt of his tears and the salty Pacific water.

I ventured over to the bodies, checking packs and satchels. One contained a Japanese prayer flag, another some crumpled documents and a picture of a man and his family. In the last was a home-stitched doll, probably made by a little girl. I picked up the picture and the doll, stuffing them in my pocket.

That night around the fire I wrote a letter to Maka.

"Who's the letter for?" Black*Star prodded, grinning like an idiot. "Is it a _broad?"_

I smiled, baring my shark-like teeth at him. "Nope; not tellin'."

They continued to pester me until I finally consented. "Fine!"

Kilik leaned around my shoulder, reading the heading on the letter."Ahh, that Albarn girl?" He smiled broadly, remembering as he grabbed for the letter. "You two still together? Here, comeon, give it to me!"  
>"Hey, let up.!I'll read it if you've got to know."<p>

"Thank you!" Black*Star huffed impatiently as he crossed his arms.

"Fuck off," I mumbled, blushing slightly as I cleared my throat. "Dear Maka, Life is different here in the Pacific. Not necessarily better, either. It's rained almost every day, the temperatures during the day are over a hundred degrees, and there are 5,000 Japs right offshore waiting to kill us."

"Pfft, what a_ turn off…" _Black*Star muttered. I flipped him the bird and kept reading. "I miss you a lot. I can't wait to get home, so I can slowly strip you of your…" I smirked deviously, flashing my canines. "…Ooohh, you guys don't need to hear that part."

They sat in shocked silence for a moment before we all burst into laughter.

That night, I sat awake as the fire sputtered out; staring up at the stars and listening to the soft breathing of everyone else. Oh, and Black*Star snoring like a Hippopotamus hacking up a lung and giving birth at the same time.

My hand found its way to my pocket, and I pulled out the doll and picture. I held them there for a moment, before I dropped them into the fire; watching as the orange, sinuous flames licked hungrily at the dry paper and flammable fabric. I watched as the doll burnt to nothing and the picture crumpled and folded in on itself, the faces of the smiling Japanese man, woman, and children fading to black and crumbling to ash.

And as my eyes closed and I slipped into a fitful sleep, I recalled what Major Tlipoca had said to us the day we graduated.

"Today, you people are no longer maggots. Today, you are Marines. You're part of a brotherhood. From now on until the day you die, wherever you are, every Marine is your brother. Most of you will go to the Pacific to fight the Japanese. Some of you will not come back. But always remember this: Marines die. That's what we're here for. But the Marine Corps lives forever. And that means YOU live forever."

I decided I would find my way out of this war one way or another.

(:Glossary Of weapons and terms:) OF DOOM

-All weapons are WW2 era and are not used today unless I say otherwise-

Asswipe- G.I. and marine nickname toilet paper. Makes sense, dudnt it?

Browning M1919 .30 caliber water cooled- If any of you have read my other story "On The Front Lines", I've mentioned this gun before. The only difference is that the one in OTFL is air cooled, meaning that it has many small perforated holes on the barrel for the air to cool the barrel; which gets hot from the gunpowder exploding in the barrel many times in the row. This happens easily to automatic firearms. Water cooling is a jacket placed around the barrel that is filled with cool water that will keep the barrel at a reasonable temperature for a while; but it can never keep it cool forever, eventually if the weapon overheats the water will evaporate.

Tracer rounds- rounds that ignite a substance on the bullet that burns so you can see the path of the bullet in night or day. If a firearm cannot fire tracer rounds (generally only machine guns did at that time), then you cannot see the bullet. You see only the barrel flash. I repeat: **If a firearm is not using tracer rounds, you don't see the yellow streak tracer effect and cannot see where the bullet is going.**

_Tennōheika banzai-_ Literally meaning "May the emperor live for 10,000 years!". If just 'banzai' is used, it can also mean "charge!".

Tojo, Nips, or Japs- racist nicknames for Japanese soldiers. 'Tojo' is named after Japan's minister of war at the time; Tōjō Hideki.

Type 100- Japanese SMG. Low caliber, fast rate of fire, and good magazine capacity.

Magazine- whenever a magazine is mentioned, it refers to the metal container that loads additional rounds into the gun to be fired. With an empty magazine or no magazine, the gun does not fire.

Anti tank- an anti tank gun is a rifle or cannon that fires rounds specifically to pierce a tank's armor and explode inside the chassis. If the men manning the tank are not blown apart in the explosion or killed by shrapnel ricocheting around the inside of the tank, their eardrums will burst and they may never hear again. Internal bleeding is also a possibility from the concussion of the explosion.

200mm- get a ruler and measure out 200 millimeters. Now imagine that were the width of the barrel of a cannon. Now think "Shit, I would not want to get hit a gun that fucking big." So yeah. It's a big gun, and will be mentioned in chapters to come.

SMG- abbreviaton for submachinegun. Just in case you don't know, a submachinegun is a low-caliber automatic firearm. Automatic means that as long as you hold down the trigger, the weapon will continue to fire in rapid succession. When something is semi-automatic, if you pull the trigger the weapon will fire once; one time for the first trigger pull. To get the weapon to fire again, additional trigger pulls are required.

Nambu Taisho 14- Japanese semi-automatic pistol. A popular 'souvenir' among marines in the Pacific.

Thompson M1A1- American submachinegun, it is capable of automatic fire.

Muzzle compensator- attachment to the end of a gun's barrel that lessens the rise of the end of the barrel when the weapon is fired.

M-1 Garand- American semi-automatic rifle. Shorter range and less accurate than the Arisaka, but has some advantage over it because of being semi-automatic as opposed to bolt action.

Springfield 1903- American bolt action rifle. The only sniper rifle extensively used during WW2 by the Americans.

Trench Gun- American combat shotgun. Pump action, not semi-automatic. Can be fitted with a bayonet.

Kabar- Look it up in a dictionary. Kabar is actually a company that made the knives for marines during WW2, and still makes knives today. If you look it up it will likely be described as "A marine's knife".

"cooking"- to cook a grenade is to hold it for a moment after you pull the pin to arm it, so that it will explode before the enemy has a time to throw it back.

B.A.R- literally standing for Browning automatic rifle. It was an attempt to create the first assault rifle, but turned out as more of a light support weapon. Capable of automatic fire and usually sporting a bipod.

Colt 1911- American handgun. Rugged and reliable, why it is still used today.

Kiska- Japanese hand grenade. Shaped sort of like a small can of pop instead of the American version, which was shaped more like a mini-pineapple.

Arisaka- Japanese bolt action rifle. Powerful, good penetration, decent range. Fixed with a bayonet very often.

Type 92 heavy machine gun- Japanese machine gun. Average rate of fire, powerful, and too heavy to be carried and fired; it must be set on a tripod or special mount.


	4. Little Resistance

**A/N: I know what your thinkin'. "Holy shit, Nikolai updated two days straight! Is this a sign of the fucking **_**rapture **_**or something? Yeah well anyway. Listen to the song, the theme song from HBO's "**_**The Pacific" **_**while reading this chapter. That song fucking gives me goosebumps. Leave it to Hanz Zimmer…**

**Also anybody who fave pretty please leave a review :3 I will love you forever and if you don't...well, you don't want to find out. So leave a review. Please. It's for your own safety.**

Blowtorch and Corkscrew, Chapter 3: "_Little Resistance" _

Death The Kid's diary entry for the day of September 14th, 1944:

"_Years after the raid on Makin, we're heading up an all-out assault on Pelelieu Island. No POW's to rescue this time. Our mission: to take the Japanese airfield here and cripple their supply network. Alongside familiar faces, fresh faced recruits. The older guys like Soul, Black*Star, and myself; we're known as 'The Old Breed'. Pfft. Old. We're not even out of our twenties…"_

Pelelieu Island, Pacific Ocean

September 15th, 1944-PVT. Soul Evans

**_-LITTLE RESISTANCE-_**

My Body shook as one of my sweaty palms gripped the cold steel side of our LVT, [G] the other was clamped down on the wood-steel neck of my M-1 Garand like a vice grip. I flicked my ruby gaze up to the numbers and letters the marked the inside of our US LST. [G] They read "278-Stay alert, Stay alive".

"-don't expect there to be much opposition." Kilik was saying as the hydraulics groaned; chains rattling as the LST lowered its ramp and propelled us out onto the Pacific. The foam and spray the vehicle's splash made hit me in the face and I caught my breath; the water was cold. I regained my composure as droplets of the salty liquid dripped off my skin, a few droplets clinging to the brim of my helmet.

Black*Star winked at me, patting me on the back a little bit too hard. "This is it, Soul! Keep it together and we'll be through this in three days."

I rolled my eyes, trying to keep the green of seasickness off of my face as the LVT rocked back and forth in the surf. "The same to you."

"Ha!" He scoffed. "Dude, that lack of confidence in a disciple hurts. The Japs don't have a chance against a God like me. We'll tear 'em up."

Looking to my left, I could see other LVTs making their way to the beach, their treads churning the water into white as they ploughed along. The sky was blue and cloudless, the sun shining brightly along the landing sight. Looking onwards toward Pelelieu, it almost looked like an ideal place to spend a vacation. The vine-draped, towering palms mixed with other trees and undergrowth, and large cliff-like point gave it a very picturesque feel. The water was clear and blue; the air around us hot and heavy, permeated with humidity. The sun-tanned beaches were shrouded with early morning mist, making it hard to see how much opposition we were up against.

"Good luck. All of you." Kid spoke over the chug of the engines and the roar of US Corsair fighters [G] overhead as they sliced apart the sky like large blue hawks out for blood.

"There they go…" One marine said.

Black*Star smirked. "Bastards ain't gonna know what hit 'em."

We watched as the fighter planes were reduced to the size of navy-colored birds in the distance. Fiery clouds of napalm roiled into the sky as the Corsairs dropped their bombs on the beachhead; the inferno of black and orange rolling skyward.

"Navy's been bombing the hell outta the island for two days straight." Harvar spoke in monotone, his gold, red-lens wraparound shades making it hard to read his emotions. I turned when I felt a hand on my shoulder. "Soul, if we hit any resistance on the beach; I want you to call in an immediate air strike. Don't think twice."

As soon as the planes had dropped their charges, airburst began peppering the sky. Flecks of gold leaving after-images of black powdery dust exploded, marring the perfect blue a sickly, broken gray. I knew that the bursts sent shrapnel whizzing through the air at the speed of sound, ripping apart any planes that were nearby.

In the distance toward the ridge, we could just barely make out the sight of a plane plummeting earthward; spinning around and around, leaving a trail of black smoke behind it.

"What the hell?"

"Is that one of ours?..."

_**BOOM!...**_

The LVT next to us exploded into scraps of sheet metal; some men thrown bodily through the air, others vaporized instantly in the blast. From the shadowed face of the cliff I could see barrel flashes at slow, separated intervals. That alone let me know how bad things would be for us during this landing. If I could see a weapon's barrel flash from this far a distance, it was a _big _gun. I could see the projectiles paths through the air. It was probably one of the fastest things I've ever seen. Now we were nearing the beach; and tracers of large machine guns, clearly visible, whistled overhead.

"Fuck!" Kilik swore. "200 millimeter [G] on the east ridge…Keep your heads down marines! D'ya hear me?"

"20 seconds!" One of the drivers in the LVTs cockpit called to us.

Suddenly the vehicle lurched forward violently, almost throwing me off my feet. The engines kept chugging, and I could hear the grinding of the threads on something; the sound muffled by the water. We couldn't continue up onto the beach; the vehicle appeared to be stuck.

"Shit!" Black*Star cussed, straightening his helmet that had been knocked askew when the LVT got stuck. We could continue on our way on foot if the driver would drop the ramp …

"Driver, drop the ramp! That gun could zero in on us at any time!"

There was a zip and a thud, and the first LVT driver went limp, pitching forward in his seat; a ragged hole in his helmet.

An unnamed, rookie marine stood on his tiptoes; sticking his head over the side.

"It's the coral!" He started to say. "We're stuck on the-"

A heavy tracer round tore his head open, the helmet knocked from his head as chunks of his skull and brain flew; his blood mingling with the water in the bottom of our LVT.

The last thing I heard was Kid yelling "DROP THE RAMP!"

Then I remember a feeling of weightlessness as a 200mm round exploded into the side of our LVT. I was thrown into the water, the moisture permeating my entire being. I heard absolutely nothing, and my body seemed not to respond to my brain; my nerves had stopped working momentarily. Through my blurry vision I could make out the shining sun, like the eye of a Cyclops, through the crystal clear water. Next to me, fellow marines who had been pitched into the water were swimming to the surface.

They would move their arms in swimming motions before their forms would kick backwards, as if moved by some unseen force. The paths of Japanese machine gun slugs were traced through the water, streams of bubbles slicing their way through the liquid, through the water, through my comrades' bodies. They went limp and stopped moving; horrifically beautiful clouds of scarlet blood tinting the water red. I felt something pulling on my arm, and I was hauled up, gasping for air and dripping wet in the sunlight.

Kid's golden eyes shone with relief. "Don't worry Soul, I got ya buddy. You're still in one piece."

I crawled on my belly farther up onto the coral, where a medic was holding wads of soaking wet cloth to a wounded soldier's bloody chest. Kilik looked back at me grimly, glasses beaded with water and sweat.

"Plan's gone to shit! Tojo's got a defensive line dug in just beyond the treeline; heavy MG fire tearing up the beach!" He pointed.

Looking forward, I could see his observation rang true. In our direct vicinity stood cylindrical frames of wire netting filled with rocks that were staked to the beach; also wrapped in barbed wire. After the small bar of coral that I was laying on was water, which got deeper; about to chest level. A certain distance away where the water almost met the land, was the no man's land. Any marine ventured that beyond that the point was ripped apart by Japanese Type 92 MG fire or blown to pieces by mortars. [G] A few marines high-stepped through the deeper water, M-1 Garands held high overhead. They were quickly felled as machine gun fire cut them down, the rounds going through them and sending pyres of water splashing into the air.  
>Reaching down to my web pistol belt, I found my bayonet sheath; sliding it out and locking it onto the end of my M-1 with a 'click'.<p>

"Soul, call in an air strike on their position!" Kid called.

Hefting the weighty radio, I called out commands into the mouthpiece.

"Waco eight-one, Azimuth 35, Range 28!"

A deep American voice spoke back at me through the earpiece, repeating my command. "_Barrage-salvo, H.E. Waco eight-one, Azimuth 35, Range 28…On the way!"_

Within a moment's time, Corsairs arced overhead; delivering a pounding barrage of explosives into the Japanese defenses, splintering palm trees and sending dust and sand into the air.

"We are go!" Black*Star called, fixing the bayonet to his own M-1 Garand as he hopped down into the chest deep water, in which a few dead marines were floating. We waded through the water and onto the beach, a few sporadic mortar shells exploding in the shallows around us.

"Regroup at the treeline, marines! Move quick, don't let those mortars get a fix on you!"

Finally we set foot on the beach, riddled with mortar craters and criss-crossed with barbed wire and steel anti-landing obstacles.

"What the hell went wrong?..." A marine next to me said, mostly to himself.

"There wasn't supposed to _be _any resistance!" Another yelled.

"That air strike should have softened them up a bit." Kilik reassured us, turning a valve on his M2 flamethrower, nicknamed "_Fire"._

We reached the low palm-log sea wall that the Japanese had previously occupied.

"Up and over!" Kilik said, ushering us up over the palm logs. I set my foot into a chink in the wall and hauled myself up through a hole in the barbed wire fence that used to top the wall. I blinked in near disbelief.

The barrage of explosives had blackened the sand within a large radius, pockmarking the area with large craters. Some charred and burning trunks of palm trees marred the now flat vicinity, and looking to my left and right I could see a few burnt, mangled tripods sporting blackened, inoperable Type 92s. A few yards ahead of us, a Japanese private was trying to crawl away from the beach; both of his legs missing at mid-thigh, a fresh trail of blood marking where his ragged stumps brushed the sand. He was soon put to sleep by Black*Star's Colt.

Further ahead more dying, badly shellshocked Japanese staggered around the destroyed front; of varied ranks and some missing limbs, some leaning on weapons or clutching their heads in attempt to try and stop the painful ringing. Soon most of them were either toppled, falling dead from their wounds; or were shot by advancing marines. Ahead of us where the blast had ended was mostly made up of dry, cracked dirt broken up by some palm trees and other vegetation. It was guarded by fields of barbed wire, strung among tall vertical signs that held what I assumed to be threats written in Japanese or crude drawings of skulls and crossed bone representing our fate if we continued to assault the island.

I followed Kid as we reached a small earthwork trench. The rattling of an MG burst to life somewhere near us. As per our training, we immediately hit the dirt. Unlucky rookie replacement marines whose senses weren't as developed were immediately felled as the rounds tore them open. The loud reports of the weapon firing sounded close, and I could see the bursts of fire from the bunker now.

It was built into a small hill, composed of concrete and fortified with palm logs. The entire face and top was shrouded with foliage serving as camouflage. The front of the bunker was protected by rows of sharpened stakes.

"Suppressing fire!" Kid shouted. Immediately all marines in our company within earshot shouldered their weapons and began firing into the slit that the machine gun was mounted in to distract the gunner as Kilik moved up. Then MG began firing another fullisade and we were forced to duck our heads down into the trench as bullets kicked up dirt around us. I had to blink the cold sweat from my vision as a red-hot machine gun slug rolled down into the trench next to me, still smoking.

"Burn 'em!" Black*Star called.

Kilik's flamethrower kicked backwards, and a howling pillar of flame went screaming into the bunker; eating away at the wood and burning to death the Japanese inside. The air was rent with screams as a flaming Japanese soldier burst from a hatch in the top of the bunker, windmilling his arms as he tried desperately to brush off the skin burning napalm that stuck to his entire body. He dropped to the ground as he writhed in agony, dying slowly and painfully. One marine drew his Colt 1911 pistol, and pointed it at the Imperial soldier.

Black*Star stopped the man. "No. Let him die."

The man quirked an eyebrow at what he thought was the odd behavior, but, knowing that Black*Star was a respected member of the Old Breed, he consented. He had probably never seen anything of the type that we had, like on Guadalcanal… [G]

As we continued on through the undergrowth, we encountered a few more MG bunkers and promptly took them out. My mouth began to feel dry and my throat started itching. Unbuttoning my canteen cover, I unscrewed the lid and emptied the contents from the aluminum canteen completely. Many other marines did the same. We got to a grassy clearing, with a barbed wire topped earthwork mound to our left and some abandoned palm log bunkers to our right.

"Move up," Kilik commanded, motioning us forward and into the clearing. "We're nearly through this; keep it together!"

_***Krakkow!* **_

A marine running in front of me fell as a sniper fired one round through his neck, severing his spinal cord.

"_**Tennōheika...BANZAI!"**_numerous deep, rough voices chorused in an animalistic, feral scream; everything from there on happening at once.

3 or four leaf and branched covered Japanese soldiers materialized like ghosts from the undergrowth around us, bayonets fixed to their rifles.

"_Aaaaiiieeee!" _ Spurred on with the energy of fear and adrenaline fueling my muscles, a bayoneted the man in the chest; kicking him off the end of my M-1. He screamed in surprise and rage, a spatter of blood dripping off the end of my red-coated bayonet and staining the grass scarlet. The man reached for his belt, possibly for a sidearm, grenade; at the time I didn't particularly care and wasn't too eager to find out. I fired one round into his face and he sprawled backwards, his tan, bowl-shaped helmet flying off his head and spinning into the air.

I watched Black*Star flipped a Jap over his head and down onto his back, bringing his kabar stinging down into the man's heart. Kid's Springfield cracked, and the sniper in a palm tree dropped his weapon, falling dead only to be jerked back up by the rope binding his ankle to the platform built into the tree. [G]

Kilik unslung the flamethrower off of his back, picking up a fallen soldier's M-1 Garand. "Keep moving." I followed Kid and Black*Star, past the corpse of the soldier I had shot. To my horror, the heavy round from my M-1 had destroyed most of his head; leaving him decapitated save for some unsavory bits that remained scattered around him.

A bit further along we reached the largest bunker we had yet encountered, with two floors and two slit windows for machine guns. Like the others it was fortified and roofed by palm logs, with 4 or 5 foot long sharpened wood stakes lining its base.

The familiar unrelenting rattle of Type 92 MG fire descending down on our position filled my ears along with my racing heartbeat. A marine running in front of me hobbled to a stop with a scream of pain as a heavy machine gun slug ripped through his thigh, flecks of blood falling to the dry sand. He fell to a pained kneeling position, clutching his limb; his pain was soon put to an end as more MG fire took him in the head and torso and he fell dead next to his dropped weapon, his helmet, riddled with craters, rolling along next to him. We dropped ourselves flat in a ditch as Japanese small arms fire whizzed over our heads, the inexorable pounding of MG fire kicked up the dirt; showering us with dust and sand.

There were some low sandbag walls around the front of the bunker, guarding the steel doors that served as the entrance.

"I want suppressing fire on those MGs NOW!" Kilik barked. We obliged him, and I stuck the barrel of my Thompson up over the edge of the ditch; firing off a few bursts in the direction of the Japanese defenders behind the sandbags and at the slit windows where the machine guns were blasting away from. Another marine put his head a fraction of an inch out of the ditch and raised his M-1 to give suppressing fire.

_SSsshhk!_

One round from an Arisaka zipped through the top of his helmet and into his skull, the man falling to the bottom of the ditch as a medic tried to give him some morphine.

Reaching for a fresh magazine for my Thompson, I felt the cold iron of a grenade touch my hand; and I looked. A _smoke _grenade. Tearing the steel pin from it in between my canine teeth, I hefted the heavy cylinder in one hand; throwing it with practiced skill right behind the sandbags where the defenders crouched in waiting for our attack. The charge sparked with a loud 'poof' sound, and slowly but gradually a ghostly white layer of smoke filled the space in front around them.

"Move forward," Kid instructed. "Get past the sandbags and into the bunker before the smoke dissipates!"

I reloaded as I ran forward into the thick, milky smog. The Japanese soldiers behind the sandbags fire a few short salvos randomly in our direction, and some marines were cut down as we ran. Black*Star and Kilik jumped over the wall of sandbags, bayoneting a few Japanese and shooting a few others. It was nigh impossible to see into the smoke from the outside, but it wasn't too hard to see eachother and the enemy when you were inside it. Taking a few steps further into the mist, I came face to face with an angry Japanese private with an Arisaka. He tried to fire, and would have killed me at the point blank range if his rifle hadn't jammed. He cursed in surprise and anger at his bad luck, stepping away from me and working to bolt once, which ejected and unspent round onto the sand.

He saw me draw my Colt and he latched onto my hand, pressing my finger down on the finger with his own as we struggled to point the firearm at one another and the handgun discharged; firing once, twice, three times, four times until the magazine was empty. He tried to knee me in my groin, but only succeeded in hitting my stomach. He swung me to the ground, holding his Arisaka by the barrel, high over his head like a baseball bat. He gave a roar of triumph as he brought down the heavy wooden butt, swinging for my head.

Thinking quick, I rolled to the side as the butt smashed home into the sand. I pounced on him like a leopard and grappled with him for the rifle as we rolled over and over, each trying to get the upper hand. I finally pinned him underneath me, and with one last burst of adrenaline fueled strength I pressed my strength as my muscles overcame his and I crushed the barrel of the rifle lengthwise to his throat, putting all of my weight down on the weapon I held horizontally in both hands. I didn't let up as his legs kicked and he made strangled gurgling noises, his flipped, bowel shaped falling from his head and showing his dark hair plastered with sweat to his head. Finally his eyes rolled back into his skull and I stood, wiping perspiration from my brow as his nerves twitched; unsent messages reaching his muscles.

We exploded through the door, and I scaled a rickety wooden ladder to the next floor of the bunker. We rushed into the room with the machine guns in them, Black*Star catching one gunner unawares as he stabbed him in the back with his Kabar and Kid clubbed the other down with the butt of his Springfield.

"Outstanding, marines!" Kilik congratulated, smiling broadly from behind his glasses; his dark coffee colored skin shining with sweat. "Out-fucking-standing!"

"Regroup at the steel doors below," Kid ordered as we all filed down the ladder and up to the steel plated double doors that led out of the rear of the bunker.

"When can we rest?" Harvar puffed as Kilik reached for the door handle.

"Soon," I assured him with a grin. "Soon."

And then suddenly something didn't feel right as Kiliks hand touched the cold iron handle on the door and it swung open.

"_BANZAI!"_

"Hunngghh-"

Kilik fell backward in shock as a Japanese officer rushed through the door from the outside, impaling him through the chest with a katana. The Jap pulled the sword free of him with a sickening squelch.

"_NO!" _with blinding speed Black*Star's drew his Colt, his hand nearly blurring as he whipped out the handgun; popping off one solid shot into the Jap's head. His legs went splayed and he fell dead in his tracks, the katana hitting the cement with a noisy clatter.

Kid dropped his Springfield to the floor, supporting Kilik's head as he laid in a reclining position; holding his stomach as his chest heaved in he sat in a growing pool of his own scarlet blood, which shone in the Pacific sunshine from outside.

"Kilik…No, hold on…We'll get Stein, it'll be okay..." Kid never finished, tears falling unchecked from his soft, golden eyes as Kilik gasped for breath on the ground and the setting Pacific sun closed on that day forever.

(:Glossary Of weapons and terms:) OF DOOM

-All weapons are WW2 era and are not used today unless I say otherwise-

US LVT- .org/wiki/Landing_Vehicle_Tracked

US LST- craft that launches an LVT.

Corsair fighter- WW2 era American fighter. Armed with dual .50 cal machine guns and capable of carrying two 200 pound bombs.

Mortar-anti infantry explosive fired in a vertical arc. Shorter range than artillery.

Sniper platform- about the size of a wooden palette placed in the boughs of palm trees quite often. Snipers had ropes tied around their ankles to the platform so that they could haul themselves back up if they fell accidentally.

Asswipe- G.I. and marine nickname toilet paper. Makes sense, dudnt it?

Browning M1919 .30 caliber water cooled- If any of you have read my other story "On The Front Lines", I've mentioned this gun before. The only difference is that the one in OTFL is air cooled, meaning that it has many small perforated holes on the barrel for the air to cool the barrel; which gets hot from the gunpowder exploding in the barrel many times in the row. This happens easily to automatic firearms. Water cooling is a jacket placed around the barrel that is filled with cool water that will keep the barrel at a reasonable temperature for a while; but it can never keep it cool forever, eventually if the weapon overheats the water will evaporate.

Tracer rounds- rounds that ignite a substance on the bullet that burns so you can see the path of the bullet in night or day. If a firearm cannot fire tracer rounds (generally only machine guns did at that time), then you cannot see the bullet. You see only the barrel flash. I repeat: **If a firearm is not using tracer rounds, you don't see the yellow streak tracer effect and cannot see where the bullet is going.**

_Tennōheika banzai-_ Literally meaning "May the emperor live for 10,000 years!". If just 'banzai' is used, it can also mean "charge!".

Tojo, Nips, or Japs- racist nicknames for Japanese soldiers. 'Tojo' is named after Japan's minister of war at the time; Tōjō Hideki.

Type 100- Japanese SMG. Low caliber, fast rate of fire, and good magazine capacity.

Magazine- whenever a magazine is mentioned, it refers to the metal container that loads additional rounds into the gun to be fired. With an empty magazine or no magazine, the gun does not fire.

Anti tank- an anti tank gun is a rifle or cannon that fires rounds specifically to pierce a tank's armor and explode inside the chassis. If the men manning the tank are not blown apart in the explosion or killed by shrapnel ricocheting around the inside of the tank, their eardrums will burst and they may never hear again. Internal bleeding is also a possibility from the concussion of the explosion.

200mm- get a ruler and measure out 200 millimeters. Now imagine that were the width of the barrel of a cannon. Now think "Shit, I would not want to get hit a gun that fucking big." So yeah. It's a big gun, and will be mentioned in chapters to come.

SMG- abbreviaton for submachinegun. Just in case you don't know, a submachinegun is a low-caliber automatic firearm. Automatic means that as long as you hold down the trigger, the weapon will continue to fire in rapid succession. When something is semi-automatic, if you pull the trigger the weapon will fire once; one time for the first trigger pull. To get the weapon to fire again, additional trigger pulls are required.

Nambu Taisho 14- Japanese semi-automatic pistol. A popular 'souvenir' among marines in the Pacific.

Thompson M1A1- American submachinegun, it is capable of automatic fire.

Muzzle compensator- attachment to the end of a gun's barrel that lessens the rise of the end of the barrel when the weapon is fired.

M-1 Garand- American semi-automatic rifle. Shorter range and less accurate than the Arisaka, but has some advantage over it because of being semi-automatic as opposed to bolt action.

Springfield 1903- American bolt action rifle. The only sniper rifle extensively used during WW2 by the Americans.

Trench Gun- American combat shotgun. Pump action, not semi-automatic. Can be fitted with a bayonet.

Kabar- Look it up in a dictionary. Kabar is actually a company that made the knives for marines during WW2, and still makes knives today. If you look it up it will likely be described as "A marine's knife".

"cooking"- to cook a grenade is to hold it for a moment after you pull the pin to arm it, so that it will explode before the enemy has a time to throw it back.

B.A.R- literally standing for Browning automatic rifle. It was an attempt to create the first assault rifle, but turned out as more of a light support weapon. Capable of automatic fire and usually sporting a bipod.

Colt 1911- American handgun. Rugged and reliable, why it is still used today.

Kiska- Japanese hand grenade. Shaped sort of like a small can of pop instead of the American version, which was shaped more like a mini-pineapple.

Arisaka- Japanese bolt action rifle. Powerful, good penetration, decent range. Fixed with a bayonet very often.

Type 92 heavy machine gun- Japanese machine gun. Average rate of fire, powerful, and too heavy to be carried and fired; it must be set on a tripod or special mount.


	5. Hard Landing

**A/N: Sorry, but I had to end this chapter in a wierd place or else it would take wayyyyy to long. **

Blowtorch and Corkscrew, Chapter 5: _"Hard Landing"_

Death the Kid's diary entry for the day September 15th, 1944:

"_We're all numbed by Kilik's death. We just never saw it coming…I still can't believe it. The most solid, dependable, and courageous Marine we've ever known. Blink of an eye...gone. Now it's down to me and me alone, to lead these men, my brothers, safely through this campaign. AA fire from Peleliu Island is knocking our planes right out of the sky. Taking this airfield is our only priority-whatever the cost."_

A few miles from the Airfield, Pelelieu Island: Pacific Ocean

September 15th-PVT. Soul Evans

**_-HARD LANDING-_**

I shifted my feet uncomfortably in the stagnant, lukewarm water as it soaked through my leggings and boots. The day was foggy humid, the moist air choking me as I passed the weight of my Thompson submachinegun from hand to hand; stopping to wipe my sweaty palms on my only slightly less damp jacket.

"Arrangements are being made to take his body back to the states…" Kid said in front of me in a gentle, almost depressed tone of voice.

"I thought…" Black*Star's shoulders drooped. "I thought Kilik would make it sure for through…"

Kid let out and audible sigh, trying to appear stronger than he as for our sake as he put his hand on Black*Star's shoulder. "We let our guard down, Black*Star, and we can't let it happen again."

"_Uncool…" _I thought. I quickly cursed myself mentally, scolding myself at my casual use of words. That was a disrespectful way to talk about one of your best friends…

"So what now?" Harvar spoke clearly in his usual no-nonsense sort of way, pushing his gold wraparound shades up on his nose as Kid stood to move forward.

My feet stuck in the muddy silt at the bottom of the standing swamp water as we walked in a half crouch; weapons at the ready.

"Tojo's got a tight hold on everything to the west. Direct route to the airfield runs right into the Japanese guns." Kid explained calmly. "If we take the flank, it might get us wet but it's not going to going to get us killed by any means."

None of us were hardly listening, more transfixed by our surroundings. Ahead of us was a dense swamp of strange trees, unfamiliar to me. The water around our feet probably wasn't more than 18 inches deep in any places, with some ferns and underbrush sticking out of the water. The dark, grayed bark and pale greenish-lead color canopy obscured almost all natural light, save for a few gloomy shafts that gave way to the cloudy gray sky overhead. The roots of the plants stuck out a couple yards from the water as if they were on stilts, vines criss-crossing from tree to tree over our heads. We could only see maybe a meter in front of us, the steamy fog from the humidity making for poor visibility.

We seemed to be walking through what once had been a pond or a small streambed, judging by the mounds of dirt to either side of us; as if they were the mountains and we were in the valley. The roots of the swamp trees looked like cages, their thick, vein-like roots standing uninhibited by the dark bog water.

After a few tense, paranoid minutes creeping through the swamp and expecting an ambush, we came upon some large stone blocks, covered in moss and algae. Probably the remnants of some ancient shrine built long ago. I began to make out wisps of black smoke through the fog; and the shapes of some men, hopefully fellow marines, turned visible. They seemed to be inspecting something on a bank.

Coming closer, we found that the men were in fact marines, and all of us could now see what it was they were gawking at: a crashed American Corsair fighter plane. The bright navy blue chassis stood out easily against the dull gray back, or what was left of it. It was riddled with bullet holes, and shrapnel and impact with trees when it had landed had chipped or scraped off most of the paint, and its tail had been mangled; its nose plowed deep into the silty mud. Its once magnificent wings were bent back at unnatural angles.

Black*Star flipped the saftey off of his B.A.R, his sixth sense taking a slight edge as he waited for some kind of trap. "The poor bastard must have been shot down this morning."

"The fuselage is still smoking." Kid said hopefully. "Check for survivors."

One of the other marines hopped up on the wing, sticking his arm through the steel frame of the cockpit canopy, which the glass had been smashed out of in the crash. The marine grunted as he tried unsuccessfully to shift the man's body to see whether he was dead or just unconscious.

"He's all snarled up on something." The man said angrily. There was a loud click. "Shit, grenade!"

_DOOM!_

The grenade exploded, killing the man and sending glass, shrapnel, and more smoke into the air as it shook the world and rung my ears like a bell.

"_**TENNŌHEIKA BANZAI**__!_

Moving bushes, looking like sasquatches covered in leaves, flew from the undergrowth, stabbing and shooting as they screamed like men possessed.

_***!***_

Black*Star cut down the forerunner with a heavy salvo of lead from his B.A.R, time slowing down as the bullets tore through the man's flesh, his insides being blown out. The spouts of scarlet splashed to earth, the red mingling with the dark water in beautiful plumes of crimson as the wooden butt of Black*Star's weapon meeting the Jap's face with a satisfying crunch.

One of them had already bayoneted one marine, who lay bleeding out in the shallows, which swirled a dark burgundy. Harvar was doing a decent job keeping another banzai charger busy, as he clubbed him with the butt of his M1 Garand, driving his bayonet deep into the man's stomach and knocked him to the ground.

"_Aiiieeeeee!" _one screeched as he charged, Arisaka held high. Harvar struggled to free the blade, buried deep into the man's flesh. Thinking quickly as the man grew closer, in one blurred movement he flipped off the safety and pulled the trigger; tugging hard on the rifle as blood flew from the bullet piercing the man. He inhaled, concentrating hard as the iron sights lined up with the Bazai charger's head, and the weapon barked again. His body jerked back as the bullet sliced through him and he toppled backwards, bits of meat flying.

I through myself flat behind of the large stacks of stone blocks as the chatter of Type 100 submachinegun fire bit away bits of stone.

POW!POPOW!

The man's body kicked backwards as the three rounds from Kid's twin Colt pistols struck him: one in the chest, one in the thigh, the last in the face. He slipped in the mud, smearing the dark clay with red as he tumbled into the water and laying face down; motionless.

We stood in the river bank for a moment, panting, before Kid spoke. "Keep it tight."

Moving forward towards our objective, we could hear the unrelenting pounding of the Type 92 machine guns which must have been in some bunkers up ahead. We were supposed to regroup with the 5th Marines up ahead, but intelligence suggested that they had already nearly broken through the Japanese lines without our help. We would be the deciding blow in this battle, in the push to the airfield.

Soon the forest began to clear out altogether, giving way to the clear, cloudy gray sky. We came to a small hill, fortified with the usual: multitudes of sharpened stakes bound together with a tangled mess of coils of razor sharp barbed wire and a wall of sandbags protecting the top of the hill. At the top of the hill, over the sandbags I could see a large green cannon of some sort, and Japanese soldiers standing around it. The others covered their ears as one yanked a cord, and the cannon kicked backwards. Scrambling like monkeys, one pulled a lever on the gun and, with a hand gloved in something that looked like an oven mitt, slid out the still smoking brass cylinder, which he tossed to the side with a dull clank as another solider slid another fresh shell into the opening, closing the hatch and covering his ears. The man pulled the cord again and the cannon rocked backwards.

FFFSHHHhhhewww!….BOOM…

"Nambu anti-tank artillery piece [G]," Kid identified. "Soul, get a grenade up there!"

I quickly obliged him as I took cover behind another pile of those stone blocks. Clamping the pin of a standard pineapple fragmentation grenade between shark-like teeth, I tugged it free of the metal explosive, letting the safety lever pop free with a click, and hurled it in a high arc towards the Japanese soldiers. It landed right at their feet, giving them enough time to go scrambling to throw it away before it exploded; killing all of them.

"Go!" Kid yelled over the deafening sound of gunfire, holstering his twin Colts and swinging his Thompson on its strap off of his shoulder. There were more distant booms as another salvo of anti-tank rounds exploded into what we could only assume were more advancing American forces. "Everyone up there, now! Go, go!"

Cresting the hill, we were greeted with the sight of a whole company of Japanese soldiers swarming about, manning more Nambu anti-tank guns, dashing in and out of the cement bunkers with long strings of Type 92 MG ammo in their arms or draped over their shoulders. For a moment they looked almost as confused as we did, before we both came to our senses and began to exchange fire. Black*Star and I took cover behind a stack of wooden boxes, and he flipped down the bipod on his B.A.R and began to give suppressive fire to the Japanese soldiers behind a palm log and sandbag wall in front of us; the heavy rounds blasting splintery craters in the wood and bursts of sand as the sandbags spilled open. The dry palm would was splattered with red as one of his bullets found its mark on a crouched Jap's head, his yellow steel helmet spinning into the air as the man's head disappeared. I could see countless other soldiers in cover behind vertical palm walls or stacks of crates or barrels crouching down and shooting at us with Type 100s, but our distance was a bit farther than its effective range, so most of the bullets either struck the wooden boxes or kicked up dirt around us.

_CCRrracckkk!_

One soldier's body slumped against a steel barrel as a bit of blood flew. I could see Kid shooting prone [G] with his Springfield, picking off man after man from a distance. Encouraged, I began to give fire from my Thompson to the Japanese behind the closest wall. One soldier ran out of the bunker and I fired as the SMG kicked against my shoulder, the weapon spitting out the hot brass shells to smoke in the dirt. The bullets impacted one after the other in a straight line up his torso and into his face, where chunks of his scalp were bitten off, with some dark black hair still attached. His Arisaka dropped to the dirt from his lifeless hands, and he stayed standing dead for a moment before his legs gave out and he fell flat on his face. Black*Star's grenade exploded behind the wall, sending what looked like a hand and a spray of blood accompanied by a shower of dirt into the air.

"Cover me," I told him as I stood, firing a few sporadic bursts from my Thompson in the direction I heard the enemy gunfire coming from. I jumped over the wall and headed towards the entrance of the bunker, where the relentless rattle of machine gun fire was becoming even louder. The bunker, unlike other ones that I'd seen as of late, was entirely concrete; Save for some camouflaging branches and netting on the roof.

I crept in on the balls of my feet; roll-stepping as they had taught us in Basic Training. There was the first MG up ahead; manned and blasting away. It was mounted on a swiveling base on the sill of a slit window; being operated by two Japanese soldiers. One was wearing the typical yellow steel helmet covered in mesh, squinting down the sights as he pivoted the machine gun on its mount, and working the dual triggers. The other wore a _hachimaki, _or headband, sporting the red and white rising sun motif, and was guiding the bandolier of 7.7 mm ammunition into the weapon with both hands; as if feeding a ravenous monster that was hungry for more brass. They both wore the standard faded tan jacket and swamp green pants, with cloth bandage-type leggings from their ankles to their knees. The concrete floor around them was littered with spent shell casings, some still smoking.

Shouldering my Thompson, I crept slowly closer. I drew my Colt pistol in one hand and my kabar fighting knife in the other. Just as I pulled back the pistol's hammer with my thumb and raised it to fire, the assistant gunner turned around and looked right into my eyes.

POW!

The bullet caught him in the stomach, a patch of bright red spreading across his tunic, and he let out a strange gurgling noise, as if he was going to vomit; his dark, beady eyes losing their light as he fell to the floor. The other turned at the sound of a gunshot so close to him and made a grab for my Colt. I stepped back and feverishly sank my knife to the hilt into the flesh just above his collar bone. He gasped in pain, rage, and surprise at my action; throwing a punch at my face, which caught me in the jaw. I staggered backwards but kept a firm grip on him. Desperately, he gave a scream and sank his teeth into my hand, which was still wrapped around the wooden handle of my knife.

I gave out a cry of pain, pistol-whipping the man across his face and detaching his teeth from my hand with the audible crack of bone. He gasped on the floor, blood soaked through his clothes, he muttered something in Japanese as he pulled out a Kiska handgrenade; fumbling with the pin. I panicked, firing three times into him at random. He stopped moving.

Readying my Thompson once again, I kept moving forward. The bunker was sparse, with numerous concrete and steel reinforcements to reduce the threat of shrapnel. I came upon another Type 92 MG, but it was unmanned, the gunner lying dead in an expanding pool of blood.

Kid stood waiting for me at the other end of the bunker, where a marine with a flamethrower was burning out the Japanese who were holed up in another half-destroyed concrete bunker. He smiled softly. "Good to see you again. I was getting worried for a bit! Don't want to leave Maka a widow, right?"

I patted him on the shoulder, smirking. "Right."

We advanced through a small network of palm log fortified trenches and pits, taking out all the opposition we encountered as we moved along. Just then more MG sounded near us, and I dove into a trench with Harvar and Black*Star as the heavy slugs plowed furrows in the dirt we had been standing. Judging by the sound that the gunfire made, I could tell there wasn't a single machine gun, but two; concentrating their fire on this.

"I want suppressing fire on the bunker up ahead!" Kid yelled over the pounding noise of machine gun fire. "The flamethrowers need to reach it!" I peeked up over the edge of the trench that we were in, which was parallel to the face of the bunker.

The bunker itself was built right into the hillside, with some grass on its roof. I assumed the interior was concrete, but couldn't tell because the bunker's face was coated with a thick layer of dirt for camouflage; making it hard to discern that there was a bunker there at all. Below the twin slit windows, the bunker was fortified with the usual, rolls of barbed wire and long sharpened wood stakes. I could see the barrel flashes of both MGs, and we were so close that I could see the Jap manning the machine gun on the right pivot the weapon towards me.

I ducked in the nick of time, bullets chewing up the top of the palm logs that fortified the trench and showering me with dirt. I watched as a brave marine with a flamethrower ran forward, shooting a magnificent pillar of pure heat and energy towards the bunker. He only succeeded in charring the dirt around the windows before the Type 92 fire hit him, 5, 10, 15 times until he fell, nearly cut in half; his dead finger still on the flamethrower's trigger as the fire spewed skyward like a dragon's breath and the marine crumpled to his knees and lay dead.

"We need to retrieve the flamethrower!" Kid shouted. I shook my head, cursing myself for the stupidity that I was just about to indulge in. "Kid," I said before I could stop myself. "I'll do it."

Black*Star patted me on the shoulder encouragingly. "Don't worry. They're easy to use. Just point and burn." He said with an idiotic grin, as if this cleared everything up.

I had Black*Star hold my Thompson as I waited for a lull in fire, which meant they were reloading. When one came, I dashed out at top speed, throwing myself face down in the dirt next the marine's bloody corpse just as the MGs opened up again: they hadn't been reloading at all! I would have been dead in less than a second if it wasn't for the mound of dirt next to me, maybe 4 or 5 feet high, with some thick wooden posts sticking out of it. I tried desperately to get the dead man's arms out of the straps so I could put the tank on my back as the bullets whizzed about a foot over my head; which, in case you're wondering, is hard thing to do.

I finally got the tanks of napalm on my back and secured the gripped the nozzle in both hands as best I could with such limited space. I got up and ran, hearing the bullets hissing by behind me as I ran. Man, these things were heavy. It was like wearing a backpack filled with cinderblocks. Once I was out of the MGs field of fire, I crept around to the edge of the bunker, pointed the nozzle towards the windows, and pulled the trigger.

It was a lot like a really powerful fire hose as it pushed against me, only I couldn't lose control; because it definitely wasn't water shooting out of the other end. The Japanese machine gunners screamed as the fire enveloped them, and my vision shook as something inside the bunker, maybe ammunition or fuel, exploded, blowing a large hole in the side of the bunker from the inside and showering us all from dirt as Kid and the other marines joined me at the newly created entrance.

"Haha!" Black*Star shouted. "Burn, ya little bastards! BURN!" Inside we found one Japanese soldier on fire, his face and skin black from carbonization, as he tried to crawl over to regain his weapon.

Of course, none of us did anything to end his suffering. We had a job to do, and a war to fight. I would make it back to Maka, _no matter what…_

(:Glossary Of weapons and terms:) OF DOOM

-All weapons are WW2 era and are not used today unless I say otherwise-

Nambu anti-tank cannon- cannon designed to fire large explosive shells made to pierce a tank's armor before exploding. You may notice that there are multiple weapons with the name Nambu. One is the pistol, another is the anti tank cannon, and another is the Type 99 light machine gun, sometimes referred to as a Nambu. This is because these weapons all have the same designer: Kijiro Nambu.

US LVT- .org/wiki/Landing_Vehicle_Tracked

US LST- craft that launches an LVT.

Corsair fighter- WW2 era American fighter. Armed with dual .50 cal machine guns and capable of carrying two 200 pound bombs.

Mortar-anti infantry explosive fired in a vertical arc. Shorter range than artillery.

Sniper platform- about the size of a wooden palette placed in the boughs of palm trees quite often. Snipers had ropes tied around their ankles to the platform so that they could haul themselves back up if they fell accidentally.

Asswipe- G.I. and marine nickname toilet paper. Makes sense, dudnt it?

Browning M1919 .30 caliber water cooled- If any of you have read my other story "On The Front Lines", I've mentioned this gun before. The only difference is that the one in OTFL is air cooled, meaning that it has many small perforated holes on the barrel for the air to cool the barrel; which gets hot from the gunpowder exploding in the barrel many times in a row. This happens easily to automatic firearms. Water cooling is a jacket placed around the barrel that is filled with cool water that will keep the barrel at a reasonable temperature for a while; but it can never keep it cool forever, eventually if the weapon overheats the water will evaporate.

Tracer rounds- rounds that ignite a substance on the bullet that burns so you can see the path of the bullet in night or day. If a firearm cannot fire tracer rounds (generally only machine guns did at that time), then you cannot see the bullet. You see only the barrel flash. I repeat: **If a firearm is not using tracer rounds, you don't see the yellow streak tracer effect and cannot see where the bullet is going.**

_Tennōheika banzai-_ Literally meaning "May the emperor live for 10,000 years!". If just 'banzai' is used, it can also mean "charge!".

Tojo, Nips, or Japs- racist nicknames for Japanese soldiers. 'Tojo' is named after Japan's minister of war at the time; Tōjō Hideki.

Type 100- Japanese SMG. Low caliber, fast rate of fire, and good magazine capacity.

Magazine- whenever a magazine is mentioned, it refers to the metal container that loads additional rounds into the gun to be fired. With an empty magazine or no magazine, the gun does not fire.

Anti tank- an anti tank gun is a rifle or cannon that fires rounds specifically to pierce a tank's armor and explode inside the chassis. If the men manning the tank are not blown apart in the explosion or killed by shrapnel ricocheting around the inside of the tank, their eardrums will burst and they may never hear again. Internal bleeding is also a possibility from the concussion of the explosion.

200mm- get a ruler and measure out 200 millimeters. Now imagine that were the width of the barrel of a cannon. Now think "Shit, I would not want to get hit a gun that fucking big." So yeah. It's a big gun, and will be mentioned in chapters to come.

SMG- abbreviaton for submachinegun. Just in case you don't know, a submachinegun is a low-caliber automatic firearm. Automatic means that as long as you hold down the trigger, the weapon will continue to fire in rapid succession. When something is semi-automatic, if you pull the trigger the weapon will fire once; one time for the first trigger pull. To get the weapon to fire again, additional trigger pulls are required.

Nambu Taisho 14- Japanese semi-automatic pistol. A popular 'souvenir' among marines in the Pacific.

Thompson M1A1- American submachinegun, it is capable of automatic fire.

Muzzle compensator- attachment to the end of a gun's barrel that lessens the rise of the end of the barrel when the weapon is fired.

M-1 Garand- American semi-automatic rifle. Shorter range and less accurate than the Arisaka, but has some advantage over it because of being semi-automatic as opposed to bolt action.

Springfield 1903- American bolt action rifle. The only sniper rifle extensively used during WW2 by the Americans.

Trench Gun- American combat shotgun. Pump action, not semi-automatic. Can be fitted with a bayonet.

Kabar- Look it up in a dictionary. Kabar is actually a company that made the knives for marines during WW2, and still makes knives today. If you look it up it will likely be described as "A marine's knife".

"cooking"- to cook a grenade is to hold it for a moment after you pull the pin to arm it, so that it will explode before the enemy has a time to throw it back.

B.A.R- literally standing for Browning automatic rifle. It was an attempt to create the first assault rifle, but turned out as more of a light support weapon. Capable of automatic fire and usually sporting a bipod.

Colt 1911- American handgun. Rugged and reliable, why it is still used today.

Kiska- Japanese hand grenade. Shaped sort of like a small can of pop instead of the American version, which was shaped more like a mini-pineapple.

Arisaka- Japanese bolt action rifle. Powerful, good penetration, decent range. Fixed with a bayonet very often.

Type 92 heavy machine gun- Japanese machine gun. Average rate of fire, powerful, and too heavy to be carried and fired; it must be set on a tripod or special mount.


	6. Scars

Blowtorch & Corkscrew, Chapter 6: Scars

Black*Star's diary entry for the day of September 15th, 1944:

"_Combat…is indescribable. A rush, a nightmare, everything at once. It's like a thunderstorm, except it's not far above you up in the sky, it's all around you. It's inside of you, and it leaves a permanent mark on you. On your body, on your mind, and on your __**soul**__. We will never be the same…"_

Roughly a half mile from the Airfield, Pelelieu Island: Pacific Ocean

**_-SCARS-_**

Kid pounded me on the back in congratulations, gesturing me forward into the bunker as the sound of men screaming, crying men and the crackle and pop of burning flesh filled my ears. "Good job, Soul. Let's move marines!"

The inside of the bunker was blackened concrete and a few burning tables, crates, shelves filled with more crates. The charred corpses of the Japanese soldiers were a gruesome sight even for the veterans like Black*Star and myself. Their carbonized, tattered uniforms had large swathes of fabric burnt away in the areas where the liquid napalm had hit them, which showed through to reddened or scalded or burnt patches of skin. In some places the heat from the flames enveloping them had burned through their skin entirely to expose dirty white bone.

I watched Kid's face and eyes as he comprehended them, and it looked like he was trying to figure out whether these wreckages of burnt away skin had once been alive and human at all; let alone a few scarce moments ago. His enigmatic, beautiful golden eyes adopted a faraway look, and it seemed he wasn't staring at the faces of the dead men that lay scattered around us, but rather right through them; seeing but comprehending nothing. After a moment he shook his head and came back to reality, motioning us to stay on the alert and fall in behind him.

The interior of the bunker took a few more twists and turns. Almost faster than the eye could see, a Japanese soldier flew from around the concrete wall ahead of us, swinging a katana wildly in one hand. Kid sidestepped in the nick of time; the razor sharp blade bouncing off the cement next to him with a reverberating clang. And Kid grunted as he raised his B.A.R over his head in both hands to club the man.

It's funny how in the midst of all this action, your mind can make time seem to slow down or even nearly stop. This is the thought that came to the forefront of my mind as these events unfolded before me. I wondered how I could notice the single, shining bead of sweat that dripped from Kid's brow to the gray concrete floor, the hairline cracks that appeared in the wooden stock of his B.A.R as he brought it pounding home into the man's face, or the fine spray of blood that left the man's lips as his nose broke with an audible 'crunch'.

Time sped up again and another Japanese soldier pounced out from around the corner, waving the barrel of his Type 100 SMG in our faces with a scream.

*****_**THUMPTHUMPTHUMP!***_

Three heavy 7.62x63mm rounds from Black*Star's B.A.R: one in the first Jap's torso, one in the second Jap's stomach, and the last into his left eye. The wall behind the man was painted with a large splatter of bright red as part of his head disappeared, and he fell like a toppling tree, his lifeless forefinger falling to the trigger of his weapon and sending a rapid, chattering burst of gunfire in all directions. We all hit the floor as the room hummed with the sound of bullets flying and echoed with deafening noise as the lead ricocheted off the concrete walls, ceiling, and floor; hissing in all directions.

The bunker interior was like a maze, with several more blind turns and T shaped corridors. I heard movement up ahead, and saw a sliver of tan uniform in the corner of a square opening in the concrete wall ahead of us that passed for a window. I motioned Black*Star and he squinted down the iron sights of his B.A.R, and took one perfect shot. A splatter of red showed around the sill of the window as the bullet bit through the concrete wall, small chunks of stone and a cloud of micro shrapnel zipping off at the impact. My sky-blue haired friend stood and we all released a collective breath as we saw that the next right turn gave through to a large square of sunlight where the bunker let out into a grassy area with a road running through it.

"Keep it together," Kid advised. "We're almost to the airfield. Keep pushing."

I shifted the straps on the tanks of napalm on my back so that they weren't digging into my shoulders and rubbing my skin raw, and we stepped out once again onto natural earth; pebbles and sand crunching underneath our boots. The clearing ahead of us was picturesque, now that I remember it clearly, although dotted with smoking wreckage; with high bladelike grass to either side of the sandy dirt road and clumps of tall palm trees scattered about randomly. Piles of wooden pallets, gray or rusted oil barrels, and the charred frames of a few junker Japanese imperial trucks marred the beauty of the place; if any place associated with this God-forsaken island could ever be linked in memory to beauty. Streams of sparkling gold tracer rounds from the airfield waved slowly back and forth in the distant sky as formations of American planes flew miles and miles overhead.

The droning of a large airplane reached our ears, and every fiber of my body shook as an enormous American C-47 cargo plane flew roughly 200 or so feet overhead, a trail of noxious black smoke tailing it from one of its four flaming engines as its struggled to glide into safe landing like an injured bird.

"Aw shit!" Harvar cried, the plane's wing clipped two tall, skinny palm trees with a pom-pom like cluster of branches on top of them; sending long leaves and branches flying as they wobbled back and forth under the impact of the metal. "The bastards took down another one!"

"More reason to keep pushing." Kid observed optimistically as the downed plane's fellow counterparts, flying in formation, shrunk to tiny specks barely recognizable as aircraft in the sky on the horizon. "Every plane we lose makes our job harder, so let's pick it up and take out those damned guns!"

Waves of heat shimmered off of everything as we advanced and grouped up with some advancing marines who were taking cover behind an overturned truck. We advanced with them slowly, tension playing on my senses uneasily. It's extremely cliché to say this, but it literally was too quiet. I would have rolled my eyes if I could have, because it happened so often, as once again time slowed down and a marine I didn't know took a step forward. His foot was centimeters from touching the ground when a grass cloaked, branch covered Japanese solider stood from the grass like a ghost from the grave; firing one round from his Arisaka into the marine's face and sending his helmet spinning off of what was left of his head, pockmarked with a single twisted metal hole and into the grass somewhere. The unsavory bits of his head flew off in all directions, and the man dropped his M-1, crumpling to his knees. Time began to speed up again as the soldier fixed his bayonet and charged Kid; other camouflaged banzai chargers standing out of the grass to give fire to and engage the other marines.

*POWPOPOPOW!*

Before the first banzai charger could take three steps, his body jerked backwards and bursts of blood flew from his chest as Kid's twin Colt's spoke twice each, his exceptionally strong pinkies working the triggers as the man fell backwards and bled out. He gave the shining pieces an expert spin on his fingers before holstering them and swinging his Thompson off his shoulder in one fluid movement. Bullets kicked up dirt around him as he neatly and instinctively rolled out of the way, branches falling from a palm tree close to us, exposing a platform in the branches and another soldier.

In the second that this happened, I found myself pointing and burning everything in my path with the M2, the banzai chargers running towards me with fixed bayonets, the tall grass where more of them could be hiding, the tree where the soldier who had fired at Kid was shooting from.

I locked eyes with them as their ferocity wavered and then turned into terror and agony as the blistering fire enveloped them, and they fell to the ground and rolled as the searing, flesh devouring napalm stuck to them, finding its way into their eyes, nose, mouth, and ears as it ate away at them. They screamed and screamed and rolled and rolled as the grass around them turned yellow, caught fire and burned to skeletons of ash, blackening the soil while they burned alive.

The screams and gunfire and the sound of bullets ripping flesh filled my ears as the nozzle grew painfully, searingly hot in my hands as more fire flew from its gaping maw. The palm tree went up in a cloud of fire and black smoke, the sniper jumping from the tree to be jerked up by the rope around his ankle, flailing and shrieking like the devil as the fire rippled around him, outlining his entire body as the leafy palm branches withered to ashy skeletons. They burned like a bonfire as the heat waves rippled around me and sweat soaked my clothing and I continued to send more Japanese up in flames, obliterating the grass and palm trees around the clearing as the men windmilled their arms, sobbing in pain as they were killed by the sheer agony.

I dropped the nozzle from my reddened, blistering hands; panting heavily as I felt someone loosen the straps from around my shoulders and let the empty tanks fall from my back to the ground with a metallic 'thonk.'

"It's okay Soul, keep it together for me. We're gonna get through this…" Kid assured me in a gentle tone of voice, pressing a fallen marine's M-1 Garand into my hands. It would have been much more convincing if he would of sounded surer of himself. He led me forward step by step, and I turned to look back at the clearing. Cinders no longer fell from the burning trees, which were now smoldering weakly. I regarded the ugly black scars that marred the land, and how the blackened figures scattered about were once humans who were alive only a moment ago, and how vibrantly the red of their spilt blood stood out against the ashen black ground. I comprehended that I had done this, and that these men, no matter what they had done against us, were names sure to be added to the list of the many people I had killed, and how I would be judged for this suffering; possibly in the very near future. I turned and followed Kid, and I didn't make the mistake of looking back again.

Following the road ahead, Kid, Black*Star, the other marines, and I came upon a large building of some sort; and looking at it, I didn't have a single clue what the three level concrete-and-steel-beam monster could have been constructed for, or what possible purpose it could have served before we came here.

On the lowest floor, with was compromised of some upright concrete beams that supported the building, and assorted shelves, sandbags, barrels, boxes, etc. stacked together to provide makeshift barricades and cover. There were no walls on any side of the building. Some Japanese infantry gave small arms fire from behind the rubble, and on the second floor, behind sloppy sandbag walls, were two Type 92 Machine guns firing down on marines who were taking cover in a ditch carved into the hill; maybe 6 feet deep. One marine was closer to the building than others, taking cover behind a truck and trying to get close to the machine guns with a flame thrower, but just didn't have the range to reach it.

"MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!" Kid yelled over the pounding of the MG fire, pushing us forward and down into the ditch. I crawled along in the dirt, examining the faces of the marines who were taking cover there. Two marines were loading a Bazooka, and I saw one crouching down whose helmet was shot from his head. Although rattled, he crawled over on his elbows and retrieved it. One man wasn't so lucky. He stuck his head up above the rim of the ditch, and within a second his head was gone, and his limp decapitated body slid to the bottom of the ditch; my stomach churning as the man's blood soaked through my jacket, sickeningly warm and sticky against my skin. Approaching the cover of an abandoned truck up ahead, towards the far left end of the building, I came into a crouch. On top of a crate sat a box of M-1 Garand rifle grenades and launchers. Inwardly I thanked God at our luck, taking the launcher attachment and screwing it firmly onto the muzzle of my M-1. I hefted a rifle grenade from the box and fixed onto the end of the launcher.

To clarify, a rifle grenade is a metal projectile carrying the explosive charge of a grenade. It's about a foot and a half long. The end of the projectile is designed to act as a pressure switch, so that when the grenade impacts something, it will detonate.

Taking aim at one of the two machine guns on the second floor, I braced my shoulder hard as I pulled the trigger and the grenade took flight with a '_Whumph'._

Following its wispy trail of smoke, I watched it impact with a deafening BOOM. The machine gun itself wasn't destroyed, but the sandbag wall and concrete under it gave way; the mess of sand, and machine gun fell to the Earth below along with all of its ammo, soon followed by the gunner as, simultaneously, a sliver of shrapnel pierced the his head and a large spray of red went skyward.

The sun shined down punishingly like a great fiery eye above us. The humid, blisteringly hot Pacific air was terrible. I crouched down, taking a deep breath and dragging a sleeve roughly across my eyes and forward to wick away the salty, stinging flow of perspiration that threatened to blind me. Retrieving another rifle grenade from the box, I fixed it to the launcher on my M-1 and steeled myself to continue the slaughter.

I slowly stuck my head out of the cover the junker truck's chassis provided, beginning to shoulder my rifle again when a gunshot sounded close by and something flashed in the periphery of my vision. Before I could duck or even close my eyes, a bullet zipped waspishly into the truck's hood; fragmenting on impact and peppering me in the face with bits of lead and additional shrapnel from the metal of the truck.

"Fuck!" I hissed, reeling back and falling into a crouch once again.

I blinked and rubbed my eyes, just to make sure that no microshrapnel had made it onto my eyeballs. God, it was a miracle that I hadn't been blinded. Laying my rifle in my lap, I brought my hands up to inspect the damage that the bullet fragments had done. My hands apprehensively probed the tender flesh of my cheek as the sounds of battle continued to rage around me; wincing as my fingertips found the tiny bits of metal under the skin there. I wiped the blood from my fingers and onto the legs of my dungarees, taking a deep breath.

I took the risk for a chance to take a quick look over the truck towards where the rifle's report had issued from. Sure enough, the Japanese soldier was still on top of the building's roof, resting his Arisaka on top of the low wall there and waiting for me to stick my head up again. In that split second, the man and I locked eyes. On his head he wore a tropical style cloth cap with a short visor and the cloth skirt on the back to keep the Pacific sun off of the wearer's neck.

The moment our eyes met, he lined up his Arisaka's iron sights with my head; and I was certain of my demise when the sharp crack of another rifle issued and the man's left eye caved in, a fountain of red bursting from the back of his head as the bullet exited his skull.

His head snapped back as the specks of blood danced in the air, and he slumped forward slowly; his ragged head coming to rest on the edge of the low concrete wall. I looked to my left to see Kid, taking cover behind a pile of boxes, swear violently, shouting profanities and scowling like a disgruntled 4th grader. "Damnit! That round was _supposed_ to get him right between the eyes! Not symmetrical at all..." He began to mutter to himself. Over the sound of the machine gun and small arms fire I could only make out the words symmetry and a few other choice expletives that his mother probably wouldn't have liked to hear if she had been around. (1)

I had to laugh at this, in spite of the facts that, one; we were in the middle of a firefight, and two, that he was completely serious. "KID!" I shouted.

He looked about frantically before his eyes met mine, a confused look on his face; working the bolt on his Springfield and catching the ejected shell casing with one hand, his bright gold eyes never leaving my face.

I returned him with my trademark shark-toothed smirk, and mouthed the words 'thank you'. He waved his hand dismissively as if to say 'It was nothing'. I stood, shouldering my M-1 Garand and peering down the iron sights towards the second MG. I aimed slightly above the sandbag wall, and pulled the trigger a second time; the rifle kicked against my shoulder and yet another projectile flew.

_***DOOM!***_

The Type 92 was turned into shrapnel, the assistant gunner riddled with bits of metal and thrown from the 2nd story floor; hitting the ground with the sound of crunching bone. The gunner's left arm was severed in a burst of gore and bone fragments, and he was hurled violently against an upright concrete pillar. He slumped to the ground, his head sagging forward. He didn't move again.

Kid slung the scoped Springfield over his shoulder on its leather strap, exchanging it for his Thompson.

"Black*Star, Soul, Harvar, suppressing fire! [G] Move it, marines! MOVE!"

Black*Star and I erupted in covering fire, him flipping down the bipod on his B.A.R and focusing his slow stream of lead on one concrete debris barrier. I emptied a few of my M-1 magazines into the remnants of a concrete wall where a rifle had fired from, my hands knowing no other actions other than how to pull the trigger and reload. Kid scrambled to get out from behind the cover of the pile of boxes and moving up to take cover behind the wall up ahead. If we could get to the stairs, we could finally get onto the airfield. And then, from there, across the airfield and to the airbase to destroy the unknown number of Triple 25 AA guns.

To get to the stairs, we would have to take out a few clusters of Japanese soldiers taking cover behind various rubble and debris. A few of the Japs in cover gave fire in the truck's direction with SMGs from behind fallen concrete pillars or stacks of boxes and tipped over filing cabinets or shelves. Kid pulled the pin on a grenade between his teeth and let the safety lever pop free with a _ping! _He threw it around the corner and covered his ears.

Concrete dust and shrapnel billowed out of the blast area, accompanied by the muffled screams of a few enemy soldiers; the ear rattling 'boom' still resonating in the air.

Kid tipped us the signal to move forward, locking eyes with me and giving me a confident nod. We all moved forward into the building, the air still clogged with heavy concrete dust and smoke from the explosion; a few shafts of sunlight making their way through the bullet riddled concrete walls to penetrate the smoggy gray haze.

I fixed the bayonet to my M-1 Garand on a whim as I felt my way around the room with my hands rather than by sight.

"AH!" A half-shellshocked Japanese soldier met my eyes and he let out a feral scream. His helmet was blown off, his head of dark ebony hair plastered to his head with sweat; small streams of blood running from his ears down the sides of his face, he likely couldn't hear at all. He hefted his Arisaka and lunged forward to stab me when a disembodied hand protruded from the smog around me, holding a Colt upside-down in one hand, pinky on the trigger, to level itself at my attacker's head.

_POW!_

A single .45 caliber bullet to his head sealed the man's fate forever.

I stepped back, heart pounding already from the few seconds of action. His legs gave out and he fell face first in the growing pool of his own blood and gray matter, a few displaced drops of blood alighting on my boots.

There was a click as the Colt's safety was engaged, and Kid emerged from the concrete dust haze, which was starting to dissipate. He patted me on the shoulder reassuringly, gesturing me to follow him. "Watch yourself, Soul. We have people waiting back home for us, and I know for both of us well enough that we can't not come back from this war in one piece."

I followed him to the left side of the building, flanked by Black*Star, Harvar, and the other marines in our company as well as some of the 5th Marines that had been assigned the same objective as us. We climbed the two flights of stairs onto the second level of the building. This section of the top floor was almost obliterated beyond any practical use, gaping holes that artillery shells had made riddling the thick ceiling and what was left of the walls; there were even holes in the floor, marking where an artillery round had penetrated the ceiling and continued on.

"This," Kid said matter-of-factly, pointing out through the remnants of the second story walls, "Is Pelelieu Airfield. Let's go, Marines! Move it!"

He pushed us past shattered concrete pillars, blasted to shreds; with mangled pieces of iron rebar sticking out of them, and mounds of brick and concrete chunks, before finally shoving us out onto a small hill of rubble that led out onto the airfield. I half walked, half slipped and slid down the mound of concrete, rebar, filing cabinets and shelves to find myself in the midst of what seemed like the world ending around me. Out on the airfield, it was complete and utter chaos. A skirmish line of American Sherman tanks were advancing closer towards the airfield building, engaging Japanese type 90 tanks and point blank ranges.

_DOOM!_

I clutched my hands over my ears too late as a shell from one of the Japanese tanks exploded into the side of a Sherman tank what couldn't have been more than 40 or so yards from me, the detonation sending painfully high pitched reverberations bouncing around inside my fevered skull. For a moment, all I heard was the sharp ringing of shellshock as the Sherman tank returned one round from its cannon into the front of the Japanese tank, sending a cloud of fire, twisted metal, and sections of caterpillar tread into the air. The ball mounted machine gun on one of the other nearby Sherman tanks (Untidy scrawl and drawings on its sides designated it as the 'Wicked Witch') let out a sustained rattle of fire, cutting down the few burning Japanese that had survived as they crawled out of the smoking wreckage of their tank; screams punctuating the bullets tearing into them, they collapsed.

The 'Wicked Witch' went up in a mushroom cloud of unspent ammunition as the first cannon shell from a pair of Japanese Type 90 tanks hit the took the Sherman in the face of its turret, its cannon's barrel slumping towards the ground as its hydraulics went slack. The second round struck and must have penetrated its gas tank, and the explosion that followed stopped the tank dead in its tracks.

The Japanese tanks were getting even closer as I stood there, and I had thoughts that we were really in trouble as Black*Star, Harvar, and Kid slid down from the rubble behind me, when more rounds from other Shermans totaled the Japanese tank.

"Keep moving!" Kid told us. "We're almost there!"

We raced further out onto the airfield, approaching what appeared to be the American plane that the Japanese Triple 25s had shot down earlier, the one that had flown right over our heads. It had left an enormous furrow through both the dry island soil as well as the concrete of the abused runway, and as we passed, it sat lopsided and mangled in its furrow; all of the glass broken out of the cockpit windows and various other canopies for the ball turrets on the top and bottom. Its left wing was torn completely free, sitting at an odd angle with all of its metal cross-supports jutting out at where the wing had broken free.

I could barely hear Kid shouting commands over the din of warfare, the screams and cries of injured me, the relentless chattering of the Triple 25 AA guns in the airfield building, the droning of American bombarding planes overhead, the sound of small arms fire and the pounding of the tanks assault on each other; all growing even louder in my ears the closer we approached.

END

It's pretty much been accepted by everyone on here already that Kid's mom wasn't around during his childhood, and that she isn't around now.

(:Glossary Of weapons and terms:) OF DOOM

-All weapons are WW2 era and are not used today unless I say otherwise-

Suppressing fire- common tactic for Marines, Army, pretty much everyone. A support gunner or assortment of infantry will give fire in the direction that they know the enemy is taking cover, so that the enemy won't be able to pop their heads up to return fire. (If they do, they're dead, basically.) While the enemy is suppressed, the advancing party will send others up to the front to subdue the threat or push them back.

Triple 25 Anti-air machine guns- These are hydraulically aimed guns, manned by a crew of two men, plus x number of men to load it. It consists of a swiveling base, two seats for the operators to sit in, and three mounted top-feeding 25mm air cooled machine guns. These guns are BIG, and don't feed from a magazine. Other soldiers would have to load additional 25mm rounds by hand into the hopper on the top of each gun to have it fire continuously. This was an effective weapon. Because, think of it this way. With that many bullets flying through the air, you're bound to hit something, eventually.

Nambu anti-tank cannon- cannon designed to fire large explosive shells made to pierce a tank's armor before exploding. You may notice that there are multiple weapons with the name Nambu. One is the pistol, another is the anti tank cannon, and another is the Type 99 light machine gun, sometimes referred to as a Nambu. This is because these weapons all have the same designer: Kijiro Nambu.

US LVT- .org/wiki/Landing_Vehicle_Tracked

US LST- craft that launches an LVT.

Corsair fighter- WW2 era American fighter. Armed with dual .50 cal machine guns and capable of carrying two 200 pound bombs.

Mortar-anti infantry explosive fired in a vertical arc. Shorter range than artillery.

Sniper platform- about the size of a wooden palette placed in the boughs of palm trees quite often. Snipers had ropes tied around their ankles to the platform so that they could haul themselves back up if they fell accidentally.

Asswipe- G.I. and marine nickname toilet paper. Makes sense, dudnt it?

Browning M1919 .30 caliber water cooled- If any of you have read my other story "On The Front Lines", I've mentioned this gun before. The only difference is that the one in OTFL is air cooled, meaning that it has many small perforated holes on the barrel for the air to cool the barrel; which gets hot from the gunpowder exploding in the barrel many times in a row. This happens easily to automatic firearms. Water cooling is a jacket placed around the barrel that is filled with cool water that will keep the barrel at a reasonable temperature for a while; but it can never keep it cool forever, eventually if the weapon overheats the water will evaporate.

Tracer rounds- rounds that ignite a substance on the bullet that burns so you can see the path of the bullet in night or day. If a firearm cannot fire tracer rounds (generally only machine guns did at that time), then you cannot see the bullet. You see only the barrel flash. I repeat: **If a firearm is not using tracer rounds, you don't see the yellow streak tracer effect and cannot see where the bullet is going.** Usually, in machine gun bandoliers, the cartridges are set up so that every third or fourth cartridge is a tracer, so that fire can be adjusted onto the target if necessary.

_Tennōheika banzai__-_ Literally meaning "May the emperor live for 10,000 years!". If just 'banzai' is used, it can also mean "charge!".

Tojo, Nips, or Japs- racist nicknames for Japanese soldiers. 'Tojo' is named after Japan's minister of war at the time; Tōjō Hideki.

Type 100- Japanese SMG. Low caliber, fast rate of fire, and good magazine capacity.

Magazine- whenever a magazine is mentioned, it refers to the metal container that loads additional rounds into the gun to be fired. A spring in the bottom of the magazine pushes loaded rounds up into the gun's receiver to be picked up by the weapon's action, chambered, and fired. With no magazine or an empty magazine, the weapon will not fire.

Anti tank- an anti tank gun is a rifle or cannon that fires rounds specifically to pierce a tank's armor and explode inside the chassis. If the men manning the tank are not blown apart in the explosion or killed by shrapnel ricocheting around the inside of the tank, their eardrums will burst and they may never hear again. Internal bleeding is also a possibility from the concussion of the explosion.

200mm- get a ruler and measure out 200 millimeters. Now imagine that were the width of the barrel of a cannon. Now think "Shit, I would not want to get hit a gun that fucking big." So yeah. It's a big gun, and will be mentioned in chapters to come.

SMG- abbreviaton for submachinegun. Just in case you don't know, a submachinegun is a low-caliber automatic firearm. Automatic means that as long as you hold down the trigger, the weapon will continue to fire in rapid succession. When something is semi-automatic, if you pull the trigger the weapon will fire once; one time for the first trigger pull. To get the weapon to fire again, additional trigger pulls are required.

Nambu Taisho 14- Japanese semi-automatic pistol. A popular 'souvenir' among marines in the Pacific.

Thompson M1A1- American submachinegun, it is capable of automatic fire.

Muzzle compensator- attachment to the end of a gun's barrel that lessens the rise of the end of the barrel when the weapon is fired.

M-1 Garand- American semi-automatic rifle. Shorter range and less accurate than the Arisaka, but has some advantage over it because of being semi-automatic as opposed to bolt action.

Springfield 1903- American bolt action rifle. The only sniper rifle extensively used during WW2 by the Americans.

Trench Gun- American combat shotgun. Pump action, not semi-automatic. Can be fitted with a bayonet.

Kabar- Look it up in a dictionary. Kabar is actually a company that made the knives for marines during WW2, and still makes knives today. If you look it up it will likely be described as "A marine's knife".

"cooking"- to cook a grenade is to hold it for a moment after you pull the pin to arm it, so that it will explode before the enemy has a time to throw it back.

B.A.R- literally standing for Browning automatic rifle. It was an attempt to create the first assault rifle, but turned out as more of a light support weapon. Capable of automatic fire and usually sporting a bipod.

Colt 1911- American handgun. Rugged and reliable, why it is still used today.

Kiska- Japanese hand grenade. Shaped sort of like a small can of pop instead of the American version, which was shaped more like a mini-pineapple.

Arisaka- Japanese bolt action rifle. Powerful, good penetration, decent range. Fixed with a bayonet very often.

Type 92 heavy machine gun- Japanese machine gun. Average rate of fire, powerful, and too heavy to be carried and fired; it must be set on a tripod or special mount.


	7. NOTICE

To all readers of my stories on , I'm here to inform you that I'll no longer be posting on here. I will repost and continue my stories on Deviantart. After a good cleaning up of everything grammar and plot-wise, I'll continue on that site. If you care to follow my stories despite this, then you can make an account and watch me; I would encourage you to do so rather than be incredibly lazy. Making a dA account is very easy and will take you like 5 minutes so please do. I'll be keeping this account on FF for a time for communicational purposes with some authors on here, but when I get around to it I WILL be deleting this account entirely.


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